Not all design work is done in Altium Designer. If you are new to Altium Designer, you will undoubtedly have designs in some other file format – either from an older Altium design solution, or some other EDA vendor tool. Even if you are an existing user of Altium Designer day-in, day-out, there may be times where you are presented with a design created outside of Altium Designer. Supporting your need to work with design files in other formats and from other tools, install this plugin to import P-CAD PCB designs and library files, including:
- P-CAD V15, V16, or V17 Binary PCB design files (*.pcb).
- P-CAD V15, V16, or V17 ASCII PCB design files (*.pcb).
- P-CAD V16 or V17 Binary Library files (*.lib).
- P-CAD V16 or V17 ASCII Library files (*.lia).
Import is performed using the
Import Wizard (
File»Import Wizard). The
Import Wizard will guide you through the steps involved in the import process, including:
- Which PCB design files to include for processing.
- Which libraries to include for processing and whether to import as Integrated Libraries or Database Libraries. For the latter you can choose which backend database to use – Access or CSV.
- Defining PCB footprint naming format, to transform your P-CAD component names to Altium Designer PCB footprint names.
- Reviewing the schematic component naming format.
- Reviewing and fine-tuning layer mappings for each P-CAD PCB being imported.
- Fine-tuning how Altium Designer projects will be created.
You have full control over where the generated Altium Designer files are to be located, by specifying a directory for design files and/or libraries, as applicable to the P-CAD files chosen for import.
Note: To use the Wizard to import P-CAD Schematic design files, you will need to also install the
Importer - P-CAD ASCII plugin.
See Also:
Important!
This plugin is only available for Altium Designer 13.0 or older versions.
Altium Designer 14.0+ Users: You can install this plugin in the Extensions & Updates section in Altium Designer.
