Revision as of 12:29, 9 September 2008

Back to Convert Protel to TARGET 3001!

Using the Protel 98/99/SE export we always got in the first line one of the following options:

PCB FILE 6 VERSION 2.80

PCB FILE 6 VERSION 2.60

PCB FILE 6 VERSION 2.40

Please check which PROTEL version you currently are using and also check it's export opportunities. Using the demo version of Altium Designer (Protel DXP) you can read in *.PCB files and later export them as "PCB FILE 6 VERSION 2.80". The Protel converter in TARGET 3001! can convert those files.

This is a screenshot of the Protel "Save As"-dialog (using a German Windows):

The conversion process is described as follows:

Highlight in Protel Design Explorer the file you wish to convert. In this example the file: "Z80 Processor Board.pcb".
In menu "File" choose "Export"...
In the following dialog choose "File Type" (extension) "Protel PCB 2.8 ASCII File (*.PCB)" and enter an appropriate name for the ASCII file, wich is now created. In our example we just added the letters TXT for the extension after conversion still is *.PCB.
After "Save" is pressed please find the converted file in the defined directory.
Now import this file to TARGET 3001! Please open TARGET and select in menu "File" "Input-/Output Formats" and there  "ASCII - Interface"
This is the dialog of the ASCII interface. Open the "Source", the ASCII-file we just generated. Click on button "Open".
In the opening dialog select it but choose "File Type": "ProtelPCBText *.PCB".	...sorry for not showing english Windows (R) dialogs.
In the converter now click button "Convert".
Where do you want to save it? In our example we save  it to the same directory. Now it is a TARGET -file (*.T3001).	...sorry for not showing english Windows (R) dialogs.
The converter shows you succeeded in converting!
If you now wish to open the project in TARGET 3001! ...
...just do it.	...sorry for not showing english Windows (R) dialogs.
This is how the project looks in TARGET. Because we just converted a schematic file, no layout can be there. <p>Please make a project Reorganisation. See TARGET menu "Actions / Reorganisation" <p>Currently free text elements unfortunately get lost. The data integration between schematic and PCB layout can be realized in TARGET 3001! menu "Input-/Output Formats/Concatenate a schematic and a pcb"...