I have desings made in old DOS based PCAD 4.51 (1989). I want to import these desings in PCAD-2001 or PCAD-2002. Can someone suggest how can this be done. Simply opening the PCB files give an error.
Got it. The PCB import is smooth. Somehow I cant import PRT (pattern files). In Pattern editor, there is no import function. If I import it in the PCB program, it does import but then the screen does not show anything. Can you suggest why,
I think, file convertion is not so good way at all. Some information is losted with it. Last month I have made big project on P-CAD8.7, sended *.pcb to PCB manufacturer, they converted it to P-CAD2002 and after receiving boards I have found that they have losted some polygones, changed form of few pads, and after soldering we have found that pcb is 5 mm bigger on one dimension. 8O I can not imagine how they did it. Now I am migrating to P-CAD2002.
Tried that. The PDIF creation is OK. To try, I used a standard PCAD45 pattern library (TTL1.PLB) and converted to PDIF. But when I translate it using Library Executive Translate, it says
"Error Fuond PDIF PCB file. Please select PDIF Library type"
I used dxf to convert Autocad polygons to copper areas and found that the conversion increased the areas by the width of the aperture. Autocad looks at the copper edge same as Pads- the actual edge of the copper, but the conversion made the edge equal to the center of a draw. Pads will back the line center away from the copper edge equal to half the aperture size used to create the copper, keeping the edge consistent.
The bottom line is to do the conversions yourself, check them and send the vendor 274x files. Whenever you do a conversion, something always needs fine tuning and the vendor doesn't know there is a problem.