PCB Converter

Extract text from PCB files

Select File
Drop or upload your .PCB file

Online File Converter

✈

How to extract text from your PCB file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your PCB file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert PCB to another file type

To convert your PCB file to another format, you need Siemens PADS or other Cad software.

Convert a file to PCB

To convert other file formats to the "Electronic Design Automation" file type, you need software like Siemens PADS or a similar tool.

About PCB files

The .PCB file extension creates a unique challenge: it is a generic acronym used by over a dozen different electronic design automation (EDA) tools, including Siemens PADS, Altium Designer, legacy Protel, and DesignSpark. These files contain the physical layout of a printed circuit board, including copper traces, drill holes, and component footprints.

The Core Problem: Because so many vendors use this extension, a .PCB file created in PADS cannot be opened in Protel, and vice versa. This proprietary lock-in forces users to purchase expensive software licenses - often exceeding thousands of dollars - just to view a design. Furthermore, older formats like Protel 99 SE are no longer supported on modern operating systems, rendering valid engineering data inaccessible.

The Solution:

For Manufacturing: Convert the design to Gerber (RS-274X) or ODB++, the universal standards for board fabrication.
For Documentation: Convert to PDF to share schematics and layouts with stakeholders who lack CAD tools.
For Mechanical Design: Convert to DXF or IDF to import the board geometry into mechanical CAD software like AutoCAD or SolidWorks.

Note: A small minority of these files may be legacy clipboard data from Microsoft PowerPoint, which requires specific recovery tools.

Convert.Guru analyzes your PCB file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted KICAD_PCB, PCBDOC, PCBLIB, SCH, ZIP, KICAD_PRO, PDF, GBR, KICAD_SCH, JPG, PCBS, SCHDOC and BRD files.

FAQ

If you want to convert PCB file to SCHEMATIC, PDF, GCODE, DXF, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI or CFG, you can use Siemens PADS or similar software from the "Printed Circuit Board Layout" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to PCB, try Siemens PADS or another comparable tool in the "Printed Circuit Board Layout" category.

The PCB Converter Story

The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our PCB converter.