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 A Guide to online information about: Printed
Circuit Board
Gerber Files While the ultimate goal of making a PC board is to end up with a PCB in hand, somehow you have to get a representation of your board to the board house that will be producing the board. Two of the most common ways to represent PCB artwork are PostScript files and Gerber Format files, officially RS-274(x) [pdf]. Steve DiBartolomeo of Artwork Conversion Software, Inc. has put together a excellent paper entitled What's all this about RS274X Anyway? This paper assumes that you are familiar with the basic Gerber commands—if not, you may wish to first review the article Apertures, D-Codes and Plot Files which summarizes basic Gerber. If you'd like to see how a Gerber file gets interpreted, you can find several programs by Thomas R. Kramer, who has written several programs for RS-274 interpreters. Several companies make Gerber
Viewers that will read and display the Gerber files so you can see
exactly what you are sending to the board house. It is a good idea
to do this. In the first board I made, I created an incorrect part
footprint. Since I didn't view the Gerbers, it went to the board house
where fortunately they caught the error. Unfortunately, this cost
me two days out of my schedule. Had I looked at the files I before
sending them off, I would have seen this error in the footprint which
didn't show up in the layout program, and I would have been on schedule. Known Gerber Viewers listed alphabetically:
Click on ViewMate for free viewer.
GerbTool View/Plot is for users who need to visually inspect Gerber, NC, and HPGL files but don't need the ability to make edits. GerbTool View/Plot goes one step further and allows you to plot your files to a printer or plotter for finer visual checking. A free trial version of GerbTool can be downloaded. GerbView is a program that lets you view Gerber, HPGL/2, and Excellon (Drill) files produced by most PCB CAD Programs. In addition, you can view graphic file formats like BMP, TIFF, JPEG, etc. You can store all loaded files into a Workspace file, which can also be compressed. This makes it easier to archive all of the files belonging to a design into a single file. Later you can extract one or all of the files from this Workspace file.
GraphiCode's free view only software package, Gprevue, allows you to examine photoplot data, print copies, and produce work files from use by other GraphiCode products.
If
you would like to add any information on this topic or request a
Circuit Cellar
provides up to date information for engineers, www.circuitcellar.com
for more information and additional articles.
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