Re: gEDA-user: dxf again

[Dave N6NZ <n6nz@xxxxxxxx>]

On Jul 15, 2010, at 12:40 PM, Mark Rages wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Having reached the limits of pcb's feeble editor, I want to take some
> traces on a pcb through a pcb->???->dxf->qcad->dxf->dxftopcb->pcb
> cycle.
> 
> I had already written the dxftopcb tool.
> (http://vivara.net/software/dxftopcb) when I discovered dxf2pcb
> (http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Sep-2009/msg00134.html).
> 
> So before I start on the pcbtodxf tool, has anybody done this already?

Done, no.  Thought about, yes.

But my application is a little different.  I want to get a DXF file that I can run through a CAM package, in particular the paste layer, which isn't a 'real' layer, unfortunately -- it is synthesized in the output HID as I understand it.  And while preserving dimensions is useful in some situations, I also want to be able to do rule-based adjustments of dimensions.  And I also want to be able to deal with a pcb design from any tool.

Anyway, my last thoughts were that pcb is the wrong place to do what I want to do.  The correct place is a gerber2dxf conversion tool.  The new gerbv is librarized, so one could write a front-end to libgerbv that read gerbers via libgerbv and then did the massage and output function.  You might checkout the gerbv library API, and consider if maybe that is a better place to accomplish your job.

-dave

PS. Another application is simply creating a component for a 3D mechanical CAD package.  For that, exporting an outline layer and the drills as a .dxf would be sufficient for making a component that could be slurped into SolidWorks or FreeCAD or such.  Again, probably a nice application of libgerbv.



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