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

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "KiCad Developers" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to devlist+u...@kicad.org.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/4e1974b0-3542-41f5-a0dd-a68eac0ea96bn%40kicad.org.

[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.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CAFdeG-r2j6oGQ-2WawmHXDZKDw31VLtf3n890g-EswxTXiCJyw%40mail.gmail.com.

[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 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/GV2PR09MB8659D877C97BF459A47DAE36ABFA2%40GV2PR09MB8659.eurprd09.prod.outlook.com.

--

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.

[Clas Sivertsen]

Hi Seth and KiCad devs,

The schematics part of this importer has flawlessly imported 800+ designs i have done over the years in OrCad including the symbols, but have some artifacts still when importing the allegro .brd files, which i am going through and fixing. Cross probing works, but ther are still a few things i need to fix, so i am working on that to make it as perfect as possible. 

I have implemented this as a native importer, so the Orcad2Kicad is different, and what i am working on is both for schematics and board files. 

I need another week or so to complete it as i have downloaded all of the TI reference designs that have both .dsn and .brd files that i am using as a batch testing environment, and comparing the outputs to the native allegro .brd layer exporter for comparison, for every pass it gets better ! ... almost there :) 

Clas

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "KiCad Developers" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/topic/devlist/W7DqTJTiXjs/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to devlist+u...@kicad.org.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CAKEMbCyWiDC1OkfuTBkv8drv5ej%2BW6OryW0PmN%3DJByXZ6a-XwA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Seth Hillbrand]

Hi Clas-

We merged your branch with a number of our fixes to remove a lot of the AI-cruft and add support for features like older schematics, NCs, occurrence-based refdes, flat schematics, OLB libraries, etc.

If you would like to make additional changes to the current status, I highly recommend creating small, directed MRs in GitLab.

Many thanks for jump starting this work.

Seth

    

Seth Hillbrand

Lead Developer

+1-530-302-5483‬

Long Beach, CA

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

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CACxSV%3D6PsC14HKgxfAJb1meH%3DkYx5Ga05M0S-Hb8WtN5cEEe4w%40mail.gmail.com.

[José Angelo Amado]

Hello Clas,

I have a lot of Orcad 9.2 files using older format .SCH.

 Are you including it?

Best wishes,

Angelo

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CACxSV%3D6PsC14HKgxfAJb1meH%3DkYx5Ga05M0S-Hb8WtN5cEEe4w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Clas Sivertsen]

Hi Angelo, ...

Yes, its definitely included !
I actually ran the batch again, and i think its quite good!

The schematics import very well including the symbols.

I just did a MR, so you can check it out on GitLab.

Please let me know if you have any issues!

Clas

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CAKEMbCzAE3J5BNe2Acha_qKWFdE1NL9aVGEo1qvZeO9RCMFKGg%40mail.gmail.com.

[José Angelo Amado]

Hello Clas,

Good news for me is that .SCH format is also supported.

But, as a common user of software, I don't know how to install and run it. 

Please  clarify.

Many thanks,

Angelo

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CACxSV%3D6aQNHKcHAiDT73OiZJkYaiKvMyg59rW%2BvGaKA6qrNFZg%40mail.gmail.com.