Sonsivri

What is the best way to make relatively minor changes to a complex PCB when the schematic is in Cadstar and the PCB is in PADS? 

Converting to Altium would make sense if the changes were major and if more changes were expected in the future, but in this case the changes are relatively minor and it might be the last change made to this PCB. 
I'm reluctant to potentially introduce errors by converting to Altium. 

I've tried Mentor's schcvt2dx.exe and editing the cadstar.cnv settings file to convert the Cadstar schematic to DxD schematic, but the main problem is that the PKG_TYPE attribute is not brought into the resulting DxD project, and PADS complains. 

Anyone familiar with conversion between these two CAD packages? 

Thanks. 

Usually this converting thing should be avoided - in the best possible case it imports everything you see, but then later you discover some missing net when you build the board. Avoid!

I would just make the couple simple changes in cadstar, and push the nets over to pads manually or by import, followed by a check of export of netlist and manual compare

I would NOT try to import the design into some new package

Of course a lot depends on if this is for you, or if this is a paying customer - so they would have another opinion.

The common ground could be the netlist. When a schematic is expotred to a PCD editor. A netlist is made. The netlist is a list of the electrical connections that describe a circuit. It should also be an ASCII file. So what you do, in Cadstar you export the netlist. This netlast you will import in PADS. I am a little vague here because I do not know Cadstar any more, nor do I know PADS. What is important is that both tools has a common ground in the pacgage type defenition. But since the netlist is an ASCII file you can in a pinch do a search and replace in notepad. I have done that many times in the past

Sorry I am late to the party but yes a netlist or a rinf netlist is the way to go.
File, File export, netlist.

I would expect to have to do some work in notepad with this to ensure it is in the correct format for Pads.