README

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

• MANTAINER: Enrique Condés

• MAIL: enrique@shapeoko.com

• AUTHOR: Andy Goetz

• MAIL: andy@andygoetz.org

• PROGRAM: dxf2brd

This program converts DXF files to kicad's kicad_pcb files. The KiCad board designer has very primitive support drawing shapes accurately. You can use this program to create a complex design in a real cad program, like qcad, and import it into a kicad_pcb file.

Current status

The program has been updated to generate code compliant with the Pcbnew “S-expression” file format which is implemented on the new version of KiCad. As of 10/19/16, all functions have been updated to the new standard and the function to generate arcs now supports any arc length on any orientation.

Compiling for Linux

To use this program, you must have dxflib installed. It can be downloaded and compiled from https://github.com/clothbot/dxflib Then use the command:

g++ dxf2brd.cpp -o dxf2brd -ldxflib

To compile the program.

Compiling for Windows

To compile and use in Windows, you must download and install MSYS2 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/). Download MSYS2 and install it somewhere, then run "MinGW-w64 Win32 Shell" (if you want a i686 binary) or "MinGW-w64 Win64 Shell" (if you want a x86_64 binary). The following commands are for the i686 binary, if you want the x86_64 binary replace all the "/mingw32" with "/mingw64" and all the mingw-w64-i686-* packages with mingw-w64-x86_64-*

$ pacman -Sy
$ pacman --needed -S bash pacman pacman-mirrors msys2-runtime
$ pacman -Su

Close and reopen the shell

$ pacman -Su
$ pacman --needed -S base-devel git mingw-w64-i686-gcc

That leaves it MSYS2 ready for compilation. The following commands do the compiling.

$ git clone https://github.com/clothbot/dxflib.git
$ cd dxflib
$ mv src dxflib
$ cd dxflib
$ g++ -c dl_dxf.cpp -o dl_dxf.o
$ g++ -c dl_writer_ascii.cpp -o dl_writer_ascii.o
$ cd ../..
$ git clone https://github.com/hormigaAzul/dxf2brd.git
$ cd dxf2brd
$ g++ dxf2brd.cpp ../dxflib/dxflib/dl_dxf.o ../dxflib/dxflib/dl_writer_ascii.o -o dxf2brd.exe -I ../dxflib/

Depending on the compilation you did, i686 binary or x86_64 binary, you will need to copy certain files to the dxf2brd folder.

For i686 binary

$ cp /mingw32/bin/libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll .
$ cp /mingw32/bin/libstdc++-6.dll .
$ cp /mingw32/bin/libwinpthread-1.dll .

For x86_64 binary

$ cp /mingw64/bin/libgcc_s_seh-1.dll .
$ cp /mingw64/bin/libstdc++-6.dll .
$ cp /mingw64/bin/libwinpthread-1.dll .

That leaves a perfectly functional binary for Windows.

Running the program

To run the program, execute the following command:

./dxf2brd some_dxf_file.dxf

It will produce kicad_pcb code as its output that should be manually added to the kicad_pcb file. To automatically add the generated code to an existing kicad_pcb file, run the following command:

./dxf2brd some_dxf_file.dxf >> some_brd_file.kicad_pcb

Fixing the results

After that, some editing is needed.

1. Open some_brd_file.kicad_pcb on any text editor.
2. Add a ')' at the last line.
3. Remove the ')' that is before the generated code.
4. Save the file.

Fixer script

A python script is now included to automatically perform the corrections described in the previous step or run the whole generation process and output a fixed file. To perform a file fix, the script should be run like this:

python fixer.py --fix board_file.kicad_pcb

To run the whole generation process, it should be run with the following arguments:

python fixer.py --input board_file.kicad_pcb --dxf some_dxf_file.dxf

DXF input file format

The input file must be in in millimeters and all closed polygons MUST be exploded to lines.