Wanted: Allegro BRD BINARY file format specification ?

[Inflex]

Anyone have by chance the specification of the BINARY Allegro BRD file format?  Would dearly love to write a module so I can support it in my software.

I've been searching quite a bit over the last 12 months but still haven't found any reference document or implementation to work from.

I've considered reverse engineering it but in spite of it lacking any encryption/encoding layers it's still a non-trivial task.

Regards,
Paul.

[Inflex]

:bump:

Bumping for attention. 

[T3sl4co1l]

You'd probably be the first.

I'm sure many would appreciate it!  A free converter (or 3rd party, in any case) would be cool.

Recommendation for all conversion processes, as far as I know, is to export ASCII format from $tool and go from there.  If you can get both versions of a file, that should help greatly (even if the binary isn't structured the same way, the objects contained within likely are).

Tim

[Inflex]

Been busy with a lot of other formats the last couple of months,  but yes, this Allegro binary format is something I keep stumping my toe on, *especially* because there's a fair number of BRD files being sold/distributed for motherboards that are this Allegro binary format.

The clear-text data in the ABRD file is fairly easy to read, it's just a case of trying to sort out how they're organising it;  given that there's likely layers, pads, pad stacks, electrical simulation information, part outlines, BOM data etc all thrown in

[nctnico]

Been busy with a lot of other formats the last couple of months,  but yes, this Allegro binary format is something I keep stumping my toe on, *especially* because there's a fair number of BRD files being sold/distributed for motherboards that are this Allegro binary format.

The clear-text data in the ABRD file is fairly easy to read, it's just a case of trying to sort out how they're organising it;  given that there's likely layers, pads, pad stacks, electrical simulation information, part outlines, BOM data etc all thrown in

Allegro calls a board file a database and yes, all the information for the board is contained in a single file so the .brd file is the only thing you need to work on a board (and changes in libraries don't break exisiting designs). Perhaps they use an existing b-trieve library to create the binary format.

[Inflex]

Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

I've encountered a format that is just MSAccess/FoxPro; while I can't read those in directly (legal/linkage reasons) at least it's comparatively trivial to decode them into a text format.

btrieve has been around a long time; seems to have been mostly replaced now with SQLite (for new developments).

Certainly working out the DB format, if it is, would be a nice start.  A lot of times I wonder if these are also inhouse cooked solutions.