Re: gEDA-user: My board is back -- groundplane (polygon) is missing

[Harry Eaton <bumpelo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stefan Salewski wrote:

> Hello,
>
> two weeks ago I send my gerbers to board manufacturer 
> www.bilex-lp.com.
>
> Just get the board back: Looks fine, but polygons building ground 
> plans on solder side are missing, so board is useless.
>
> PNG pictures of pcb layout are available at
> http://www.ssalewski.de/AVR_USB_gEDA.html.de,
> gEDA sources at
> http://www.ssalewski.de/AVR_USB_gEDA-20061016.tar.gz
> and the gerbers I send to board producer at
> http://www.ssalewski.de/boarddata.zip
>
> For me gerbers are ok if displaying it with gerbv. 
> Is there something wrong with the gerber files?
>
> Best regards
>
> Stefan Salewski
>  

My guess is that your pcb fabricator does not support the gerber rs274x 
specification. Some don't because they use old equipment made before the 
specification was adopted. Of course they should tell you that they 
don't support it. Another possibility is that they could support it, but 
don't like files with merged layers that pcb used to produce. In that 
case they should tell you that they won't except the merged layers.  
Some fabs have a low-cost prototype option where they tell you all of 
the restrictions on a web page and it is up to you to ensure that you 
meet them - they will fab regardless of what you send but the 
responsibility for failing to meet their restrictive requirements is yours.

If your fab vendor did not disclose their inability to support polygons 
or merged layers then I think you should be entitled to a refund.

One thing I did find unusual in the gerber file was that at the end, 
after all of the drawing was done, a clear layer was added where each 
aperature was selected but no drawing was done. I don't know why pcb 
would have done that but it doesn't break any rules or change how the 
image looks.

harry




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