gEDA-user: Re: dxf?

[Dave N6NZ]

Carlos Nieves Ónega wrote:
> 
> You may import drawings from DXF, but what about component positions,
> for example? will you able to get a 3D model of your PCB board? 

I have never used DXF files for 3D.  It is pretty weak at 3D.  It does 
have Z information, and would probably work well enough for getting 
component volumes.  PCB is not going to be able to do anything with a 
component volume, though.

> 
> There is another open ASCII format designed for MCAD/ECAD integration:
> IDF. I use it everyday at work to exchange data between the mechanical
> CAD and the electronic CAD programs (in both directions).

I don't know anything about IDF, and don't have time to study something 
I don't have an immediate use for.  My background is electronics design 
and design automation, so all the mechanical CAD packages are new 
territory for me -- I'm not exactly your first choice for mechanical CAD 
work.

Let me be clear about my motivation: I wrote a 2D DXF processor for 
another project, so I have become familiar with a particular DXF library 
that is very robust for 2D information.  Importing board outlines and 
mounting hole placement seems like useful functionality, and is a 
limited goal that I could probably accomplish.  If other people would 
find that functionality useful, I will look into it.  If it is not 
useful enough in that form to interest other users, I won't bother.

And while I'm stating my limitations, I don't understand DXF well enough 
to use this library to *export* DXF from pcb -- that is a different, 
much harder, problem.  I can see where it would be very nice to export a 
mechanical drawing of a pcb with component placement in a form that 
could be imported into a mechanical package, but I think the project is 
beyond my knowledge of DXF.

-dave