Re: gEDA-user: PCB gerber export problem

[Stuart Brorson <sdb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

It sounds to me like PCB is outputting correct Gerber and CircuitCAM
is wrong.  It may be as simple as finding a "preferences" menu in
CircuitCAM and setting it up correctly.  If your CAM personnel will
let you touch the program, that is......

I'm a little confused about what you mean here:

> The shapes on the board look fine except that GCPrevue shows all "data
> layers" in the gerber file in the positive way. There's one layer that I
> think should be subtracted from the shapes.

Do you mean that there are shapes within a single layer which should
be subtracted from other shapes in the same layer?  That generally
works fine in GCPrevue.

In any event, GCPrevue is your friend when confronting bad CAMming.
Unfortunately, even though PCB outputs correct Gerber, many fab houses
turn up their noses when confronted by its output since the program is
Linux "freeware" [1].  But if you show people screenshots from
Windoze-based GCPrevue, then they can't claim the problem is caused by
PCB, and they have to figure out what *they* are doing wrong.

Therefore, if each layer looks good in GCPrevue, then your Gerbers are
fine.  You can take GCPrevue screenshots to your CAM group and start
kicking their butts......

Stuart

[1]  Yes, *I* know it's not freeware.....


On Wed, 10 Jan 2007, Tomaz Solc wrote:

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> Hi Stuart
>
> > My heretical suggestion:  Download GCPrevue and inspect your Gerbers
> > with it.  GCPrevue is a very powerful freeware [1] Windoze program for
> > Gerber viewing.  It has never failed me.  If the polygons look bad in
> > GCPrevue, the PCB has a problem.  If the polygons look good in
> > GCPrevue, then your CAM software needs to be configured better.
>
> Thanks for your help. I've just tried this. GCPrevue reports 4 errors
> when I import my gerber files: "Ignored unsupported parameter - LN".
> - From what I could find with Google it seems that this parameter is only
> for setting layer names and doesn't have any effect on the final image.
>
> The shapes on the board look fine except that GCPrevue shows all "data
> layers" in the gerber file in the positive way. There's one layer that I
> think should be subtracted from the shapes. I've tried setting that
> layer to "minus" and "composite" manually with no effect.
>
> I'm worried because from the screenshot of CircuitCAM it's obvious that
> in some places this layer is correctly subtracted from shapes and in
> some places it is ignored.
>
> Best regards
> Tomaz
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