File Upload Guide

Pinscope needs two files from your EDA tool to review a design:

• A PADS-PCB ASCII netlist or an EDIF 2.0.0 netlist — the circuit's connectivity. Pinscope accepts .asc, .net, .NET, .txt (PADS-PCB) and .edn, .edif, .edf (EDIF); the format is auto-detected from the file's first bytes.
• A Bill of Materials (CSV or XLSX) — mapping each reference designator to a manufacturer part number.

Example files

New to Pinscope? Here's a complete set of files from Phil's Lab' KiCad 9 TI MSPM0 tutorial you can download and upload as a starter project:

• TI-MSP-KICAD9-TUTORIAL.asc — netlist
• TI-MSP-KICAD9-TUTORIAL.csv — BOM
• TI-MSP-KICAD9-TUTORIAL-SCHEMATIC.pdf — schematic (for your reference; Pinscope doesn't need this)

The BOM below shows the shape Pinscope is looking for.

The BOM

Pinscope auto-detects BOM columns by header name. After upload you'll confirm which column holds designators and which holds part numbers, so the exact header names don't matter — only that these columns exist.

Required

• Designator / Reference — one row per part, or grouped references like C1,C2,C5 in a single row (Pinscope expands these automatically).
• Manufacturer Part Number (MPN) — the full orderable part number. Pinscope uses this to look up datasheets, so 10uF 0805 on its own is not enough — it needs e.g. GRM21BR61C106KE15L.

Recommended

• Value or Comment — passive values (10uF, 4.7k, 8MHz). Used for passive value resolution and mismatch detection when the MPN can't be matched.
• Footprint — used to enrich the design graph.

CSV and XLSX both work. For XLSX, the first worksheet is used.

The Netlist

Pinscope accepts either a PADS-PCB ASCII netlist or an EDIF 2.0.0 netlist — the upload form auto-detects which one you sent based on the file's first bytes, so you don't have to pick a format.

PADS-PCB ASCII

This is the default format most EDA tools can export. It looks like this:

*PADS-PCB*
*PART*
U1 LQFP48
C1 0402
...
*NET*
*SIGNAL* GND
U1.1 U1.48 C1.2
*SIGNAL* VCC
U1.24 C1.1
...
*END*

If your file starts with *PADS-PCB* and ends with *END*, you're good. Reference designators may contain spaces (e.g. CV GND) — Pinscope resolves them against your BOM.

Heads up — two different .asc files exist. PADS (and tools that interop with PADS, like Xpedition) use the .asc extension for two unrelated things:

• The schematic-exported netlist starts with *PADS-PCB* and lists *PART* / *NET* sections. This is what Pinscope wants.
• The full PCB layout dump starts with !PADS-POWERPCB-V… and contains routing/footprint geometry. Pinscope cannot parse this.

If your upload errors with "No components found", check the first line of the file.

EDIF 2.0.0

EDIF is a vendor-neutral s-expression format. The first form is (edif …, with an (edifVersion 2 0 0) declaration near the top, libraries that define each cell's pin list, and a design library that lists (instance …) and (net …) forms. Pinscope has been verified against Siemens xDX Designer / DxDesigner exports; other EDIF 2.0.0 exporters (OrCAD, Altium, KiCad, Eagle) follow the same grammar and should work, but haven't been broadly tested. If your EDIF file doesn't parse, contact us and send a snippet — most fixes are small.

If your tool exports both PADS-PCB and EDIF, PADS-PCB is the path more users have validated; use EDIF when it's the only option.

Exporting from your EDA tool

Troubleshooting

• "No components found" — your netlist is missing the *PART* section. Re-export specifically in PADS-PCB format (not Spice, Protel, or a generic text netlist). If the first line is !PADS-POWERPCB-V…, you uploaded the PCB layout dump instead of the schematic netlist — re-export from the schematic side.
• "No ground net found" — your netlist has no net named GND, VSS, AGND, DGND, or similar. If you exported a sub-sheet, re-export the top sheet instead.
• Unresolved parts after the pipeline runs — a BOM row has no MPN, or the MPN wasn't found on DigiKey. Add the MPN, or rely on Pinscope's value fallback (fills in from the Value / Comment column).

Still stuck? Contact us with your netlist and BOM attached and we'll take a look.