Re: gEDA-user: single-sided boards

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David SMITH wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 07:05:05PM +0000, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote:
>> On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:47:28 +0000, David SMITH wrote:
>>
>>> From a user's point-of-view, it makes life much easier because they no
>>> longer have the hassle of generating Gerbers (e.g. getting the correct
>>> version of RS274, putting in the right number of decimal places,
>>> including a readme file to indicate which layer is which, etc...)
>> There are no such options in the gerber export dialog of pcb.
> 
> Maybe not, but it's there in other packages, though, so this info still
> needs to be communicated to the fab somehow (as it doesn't go in the
> Gerber file itself), or you rely on them making correct assumptions.


FAB houses have lots of experience in dealing with the confusing and 
broken output from a whole slew of EDA tools.  Note that some of this 
information is in fact there.  For example, the leading/trailing zero 
bit and # of digits is *supposed* to go in the headers (at least for the 
drill files) but some tools give you flexibility to go outside of the 
specs and also generate garbage headers.

> 
> Just looking at the FAQs on many of the PCB fab websites, it is clear
> that people make all types of mistakes generating Gerbers (layer order
> wrong, drill file mistakes, etc...).  Being able to put this process
> in the hands of the "professionals" who are doing it all the time just
> means that errors are likely to be eliminated.
> 

but now they need to deal with countless versions of countless different 
tools.  And while it is not a big deal for pcb, it becomes a big deal if 
they are having to buy high dollar EDA tools and there is plenty of room 
for a "professional" to screw up generation of gerbers.  Actually, I 
cringe at the idea of someone else generating gerbers for a board of 
mine without me reviewing the result with something like gerbv.

There is a newer file format available that is supposed to address many 
of the shortcomings of the now-ancient RS274-X but the information I've 
been given by the one or two vendors I asked is that they still prefer 
RS274-X and haven't had a solid migration to the newer format(s).

-Dan



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