>"Export formats: PDF, SVG, pixmap, BOM, pick&place, Gerber/Excellon". None of which have enough info for import into another EDA program. This thing is very self-contained, which is unusual for an open source program.
The limitation here is that only KiCad has an open format for design files to begin with. Maybe we should be agitating for a better open-standard for schematic capture? I'd love to be able to output a schematic from e.g. a spice simulation, then import that into my ECAD suite. The netlist (which is part of the Gerber output) is human-readable, so I suppose its possible to extract the schematic from that. But then, it'll be computationally expensive to arrange that information in an easy-to-read format.
How is the KiCAD format more open than LibrePCB? Both are custom formats using S-expressions.
The thing is that while the files look similar superficially, LibrePCB has a lot of differing library concepts: https://librepcb.org/features/library-concept/ Just as an example, LibrePCB has UUIDs for _everything_. That makes conversion from/to KiCAD more difficult.
Usually the other programs have specific importers for other tools.
It is unreasonable to expect a tool to support the formats of others for export.
Even five figure professional tools only do those exports and then have separate importer plugins.
For example Altium Designer recently added a functional kicad importer.
But the DXF stuff? Excellent for integration with mechanical CAD tools and for use with RF simulators like CST or HFSS.
QUCS Studio is the odd one out that they support importing kicad layout files into their EM simulator.
The limitation here is that only KiCad has an open format for design files to begin with. Maybe we should be agitating for a better open-standard for schematic capture? I'd love to be able to output a schematic from e.g. a spice simulation, then import that into my ECAD suite. The netlist (which is part of the Gerber output) is human-readable, so I suppose its possible to extract the schematic from that. But then, it'll be computationally expensive to arrange that information in an easy-to-read format.