The KiCad export info we obtained in our first attempt is simplistic, and it does miss instance identifiers (c43, u17, r9 sorts of designators, which are present in Altium info). There is an ongoing discussion, so perhaps there are some alpha/beta-testers of it.įor BOM – we are finding information in the Altium database as well as KiCad. KiCad eeschema-nightly currently does not support importing Altium schematics. In our task, we found a very useful post on the KiCad blog that explains how to import an Altium PCB design file in Kicad.Īpparently the Altium Importer is not available if you start PCB window from the KiCad project manager window, you have to start it from the command line as pcbnew-nightly to get the KiCad import feature for loading alien formats. We were pleasantly surprised by members of the KiCad team that promptly answered our call for volunteers able to help us in the source translation process, thank you guys, it was really much appreciated!

To achieve the porting of the sources, we first tried loading the Mentor Xpedition sources using the PCB Design Software Altium, and from there, export the sources to KiCad. Providing source files created with a proprietary software is not ideal, therefore we have worked to convert the sources to the Open Source KiCad format. This 3d tool is a part of the kicad StepUp MCAD exporter, a plugin for pcbnew to make ECAD MCAD collaboration available also in kicad.At the beginning of March the consultant engineer paid using the donation campaign provided us with the Mentor Xpedition source files of our PCB. You can also click on 'Create axis' button to have an other help in orienting the part.

No need to reiterate the aligning process or empiric calculate offset and rotation to apply to VRML model. That will produce a 3d VRML model exactly aligned to footprint as in mechanical CAD. 3dcontentcentral, grabcad, etc), align the model to kicad footprint and export the model to wrl. With ' kicad-StepUp-tools' is possible to download a STEP part from on-line libraries (e.g.

I've made a tool to align the 3d model directly moving it over the pcbnew footprint.

Altium import kicad