Re: gEDA-user: Open Source mechanical CAD on the horizon

[Dave N6NZ <n6nz@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 9, 2010, at 3:33 PM, Peter Clifton wrote:

> On Tue, 2010-03-09 at 18:27 -0500, Dan McMahill wrote:
>> pstoedit converts postscript to various formats.  So I suppose you could 
>> try pcb export to postscript and then pstoedit to produce dxf.  That 
>> said, there are always issues with file conversions and I suspect you're 
>> much better off letting pcb directly produce dxf.  But it may just work.
> 
> NB: The code being talked about is DXF -> PCB outline... not PCB->DXF.
> 
> It seems that we now have _three_ people who have independently written
> such a tool. I guess this suggests people are wishing to design boards
> which fit in a given mechanical envelope, as exported from a mech.-cad
> package.

Which is an interesting thought.  For my part, if I could get the board outline and the location of mounting holes to/from a .dxf file, it would cover everything that I need for chassis fit.  My designs are so small that doing it manually isn't a hassle for me, but of course that doesn't scale in the real world.

What I really want, though, is a way to get the stencil layer pad outlines as .dxf entities.  I took a look at the code, and it appears that the stencil layer isn't a "real" layer -- is that true?  Is it simply generated on the fly off the pad information during gerber export?

-dave


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