Proposal: native OrCAD Capture (.DSN) schematic importer

[Clas Sivertsen]

Hello KiCad developers,

I'm an electronics engineer and PCB designer who has been working a lot in OrCAD and allegro, but have been transitioning more and more to KiCad. Since i have many hundreds of designs already done in OrCad, and especially often get reference designs in OrCad format, i have been working on a Windows app that converts them to KiCad. 

Thus, i was thinking this would be a nice contribution to make this app into an import option for KiCad so i used Claude with the latest Fable 5 to turn my app into an import option in KiCad. Before i submitted the code for this, i ran the app on some 800+ .dsn files i had accumulated on my computer over the years, and i have fixed all issues i could notice. 

How it was validated
--------------------
I checked correctness by exporting the imported netlist with kicad-cli and
comparing named-net pin membership against OrCAD's own stored net tables. I ran
this across a corpus of 815 real-world designs (OrCAD releases spanning
~1995–2026): all import without crashing, and on modern flat/multi-page designs
the net membership matches. Hierarchical designs currently import flattened
(with warnings); pre-2003 files are rejected with a clear message. Every page
also loads and plots in the current master build.

Prior art / relationship to existing work
------------------------------------------
Format knowledge derives from the MIT-licensed OpenOrCadParser project plus my
own reverse engineering. I'm aware of the draft MR !1963 by Werni2A adding an
OrCAD Library (.OLB) importer — this schematic (.DSN) importer is complementary
to that effort, and both build on OpenOrCadParser.

Disclosure: AI assistance
-------------------------
In line with KiCad's tool-generated-content policy, I want to be transparent up
front. The OrCAD .DSN format reverse-engineering, the validation corpus and
methodology, and all the scope and design decisions are mine. The code itself —
both the original standalone converter and this C++ port into KiCad — was
written with an AI coding assistant (Anthropic's Claude Code) under my
direction, and I iterated on it against the ~815-design corpus until it was
correct. I've reviewed and validated the result and I take full responsibility
for the code and its maintenance. 

The branch is on my fork here for reference:
https://gitlab.com/TaipeiViking/kicad/-/tree/orcad-schematic-importer

Thanks for taking a look — I'd welcome any guidance before I raise the MR.

Next, i am working on AI driven auto place and route that i would like to also contribute in the future. 

Best,
Clas Sivertsen, Taipei Taiwan

[Seth Hillbrand]

Hi Clas,

Thank you for your work on this project.

Please open an MR on gitlab and we'll review it. 

Please let me know if any of the corpus is available for us to use in our verification

Best, 

Seth

    

Seth Hillbrand

Lead Developer

+1-530-302-5483‬

Long Beach, CA

www.kipro-pcb.com    in...@kipro-pcb.com

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[Reena Mike]

Hi,

Just checking, are you interested in acquiring the list of attendees? Please respond to my email. I'm waiting for your response.

Thank You.

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[José Angelo Amado]

Hello Clas Sivertsen, I am very glad you developed such a translator I asked to Kicad team to provide us.

I will check it

Best regards,

Angelo - Brazil 

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José Angelo Amado

+55 (61) 9 9531 9090

[José Angelo Amado]

Hello,  Clas Sivertsen,

I downloaded your GitHub file. 

Please let me know if installing your "Orcad2Kicad Converter" will affect the existing KiCad 10 installation on my desktop, or if they are independent. 

Thanks, 

Angelo.