Exports and code generation

A signal definition is only useful if the next tool can read it. Everything here goes through one cantools-backed path, so what the preview decodes is what the file produces.

The formats

Format	Import	Export	Notes
Standard DBC	Yes	Yes	The lingua franca. Parseable by cantools and the Vector tools.
openpilot DBC	Yes, as a cross-reference	Yes	Carries the comma.ai checksum and counter annotations.
Vector CANdb++	No	Yes	With `BA_DEF_` attribute blocks.
AUTOSAR ARXML 4.3	Yes	Experimental	Round-trips within CanLab but is not validated against the full AUTOSAR schema. Do not rely on it in external AUTOSAR tools yet.
Wireshark Lua dissector	No	Yes	Your signals appear by name in a packet capture. Little- and big-endian; the big-endian path is verified against cantools.
Excel or CSV CAN matrix	Yes	No	For the spreadsheets that OEM documentation often arrives as.
Decoded time series	No	Yes	A timestamp-by-signal matrix to CSV or Parquet, for analysis elsewhere.

Extended 29-bit identifiers, multiplexed signals and value tables round-trip.

Cross-referencing opendbc

Tools → Match against opendbc fetches the commaai/opendbc library, caches it under ~/.canlab/opendbc_cache, and ranks how well your capture's arbitration IDs match each OEM database. The first run needs network access; afterwards it works from the cache.

If your vehicle is one openpilot already supports, this can shortcut most of the work. If it is not, a partial match still tells you which OEM's conventions to expect.

Generated code

CODE GEN writes a working program from your definitions: Python that opens the bus and decodes the signals you picked, or encodes and sends them, and a C variant that does the bit extraction directly. Pick the signals, the interface and the direction.

The generated Python goes through cantools for encoding, so a frame it produces is formed the same way the preview decodes it.

Projects

File → Save Project writes a .canlab file holding the frames, the signal definitions and your notes together, so a session can be picked up later or handed to somebody else. It is the only format here that round-trips the work rather than the result.