gEDA-user: soliciting suggestions on making drill/fabrication drawings fromExcellon drill files, or another PCB manufacturer

[Charles Lepple <clepple@ghz.cc>]

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone out there uses pcb-1.6.3 or its 
successors for actual prototypes anymore :-(

I have a board design drawn with pcb-1.6.3, and I want to get it 
manufactured. The folks at work have had almost nothing but good things 
to say about Advanced Circuits (http://www.4pcb.com), so I'm working 
with them right now.

Problem is that PCB doesn't generate a fabrication or drawing (just the 
Excellon drill programming file). I figured I might be able to stitch 
together a bunch of the PostScript output files and edit in some drill 
identifiers, but that didn't work.

 From what I gather, they want a drawing that shows different markings 
at each drill hit. It seems like more of a sanity check than an absolute 
manufacturing requirement, but apparently if you get the $33/each 
special from this place, you don't get the full PCB file fixing service.

I wouldn't be so concerned about the drill program (after all, it works 
fine in gerbv) but Lavenier's (sp?) ViewMate program misaligns the drill 
and Gerber files, and so does freedfm.com (4pcb.com's online 
design-for-manufacturability checker).

I'm not sure what I need, really. If anyone has a favorite PCB fab that 
can handle pcb's Gerber and drill files right off the bat, I'll consider 
it. Or, pointers to Excellon drill-to-drawing (PostScript, or whatever) 
code would be cool. I will probably have to write some code to get out 
of this mess, but if someone else has a good starting point, I'm all ears.

Harry, sorry to email you directly about this, but I noticed that you 
have used PCB to prepare several designs that have gone through 
manufacturing, and I am interested to hear about your manufacturing 
experiences.

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Charles Lepple <clepple@ghz.cc>
http://www.ghz.cc/charles/