Request: Add IDX support

[Evan Shultz]

IDX is a better format than IDF for passing a PCB design back and forth between ECAD and MCAD tools. First a baseline file is created, and afterwards incremental changes are proposed which can be approved or rejected during import/compare. As added benefit, on top of incremental change review, is that importing changes is typically faster and more safe as it's not an "all or nothing" format like IDF.

While not a critical issue for KiCad, I'd like to see IDX import/export supported as an upgrade over IDF.

The IDX 2.0 spec is at http://www.prostep.org/fileadmin/freie_downloads/Empfehlungen-Standards/ProSTEP_iViP/ProSTEP-iViP_Recommendation_ECAD-MCAD_5_2-0_01.pdf.

To give an idea of the existing IDX interface implementations, here are blog posts from other PCB design tools:
Altium: http://techdocs.altium.com/display/ADOH/IDX+Support
Allegro: http://community.cadence.com/cadence_blogs_8/b/pcb/archive/2011/06/15/what-s-good-about-allegro-pcb-editor-idx-support-look-to-spb16-5-and-see

[Evan Shultz (evan-shultz)]

Would this be a candidate item to add to the v6 roadmap?

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

@Evan, the v6 road map is pretty aggressive already so adding another task is probably not the best thing. I'm not opposed to it but pretty much all of our dev manpower is assigned to some v6 task so it's unlikely that this would happen in v6 unless someone steps up to implement it.

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. This report is now available here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2029