gEDA-user: New Tool for Making pcb footprints - new demo

[Steve Morss]

I just added a file "footprints.inc" to the 
www.catalinacomputing.com/gEDA/demos directory.  It contains some 
pcblander macros for making BGAs, TQFPs, SOICs, DIPs, SIPs, test pins 
and surface mount 2 padded devices.  There's a file called 
"footprints.pdf" with a sample output, so you can see what the macros 
can do (it's a big footprint with a bunch of footprints laid out 
together).  There's a file "footprints.lander" that generates the layout 
in footprints.pdf.  Type "pcblander footprints.lander" and you'll get a 
pcb file called "footprints".

With the new macros, you can generate pcb common footprints with only a 
few lines of text.  Still, they are flexible enough to handle most 
common footprints, and you can add and tweak them by modifying 
footprints.lander or your footprint scripts.

Steve



 
Steve Morss wrote:
> Recently, I built a board using lots of custom surface mount parts, as 
> well as a number of unusual through hole parts.  When it came time to 
> generate the footprints, I needed to design a number of new 
> footprints.  I looked into the tools available, and found some 
> graphical tools and specialized scripting tools, but they either were 
> hard to use, or I couldn't get them to build some of my footprints 
> (sorry in advance, if I misrepresented someone's tool).  To solve my 
> problems, I came up with "pcblander", which has been very effective 
> for me.  It uses human readable scripts as input.  The scripts are 
> pretty easy to follow, as they are mostly assignment statements and a 
> few function calls.  For those of you who use Darrell Harmon's 
> "footgen" program, it has a number of similarities to that - I got 
> myself started on pcblander by learning how footgen works.  pcblander 
> is quite flexible and extensible - if there's something missing, I 
> should be able to add it in quickly (or if you prefer, you can do it 
> by writing macros or, if you want complete flexibility, functions in 
> perl).
>
> If you are interested, I've got a release at 
> www.catalinacomputing.com/gEDA containing the program and source code, 
> a readme, and some footprint examples.
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
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