Cheap PCBs

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwightk.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Thu Nov 21 16:14:01 2002

>From: "Peter C. Wallace" <pcw_at_mesanet.com>
>
>On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Jim Kearney wrote:
>
>> >From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwightk.elvey_at_amd.com>
>> > Gerber format is not all that complicated. It seems that someone
>>
>> No, it's not. It doesn't seem like there's an off-the-shelf way to go from
>> raster (PDF or TIFF) to vector (Gerber), though, or at least nothing jumps
>> out from Google. In principle it would be easy to load a raster and write
>> it out as a set of lines in Gerber format.
>>
>> Actually I have a vague recollection that one of the board houses charged
>> extra for "very large Gerber files caused by rasterized plots".
>>
>>
>>
>
>Plus its pretty hard to extract the drill info from a 'vectorized' raster
>plot...
>
>
>Peter Wallace
>

Hi
 That is why I didn't say that one should write a program
that reads scanned files, I said that one should have a tool
that worked from a mouse ( with human attached ). Most tools
that would look at scanned data would tend to make a lot
of small rectangles instead of correctly grouping the information
as a single large rectangle. We are talking about something that
a human can easily do but a program has issues because it
requires judgement.
 The fact is that Gerber files are quite simple. They are
about as simple as one can get. Although I don't recall the
exact syntax, it is thing like goto to x,y; with aperture
wheel position 2 draw relative xx,yy; goto to u,v; with
aperture wheel postion 3 flash; and so on and so on.
 I don't think one could describe a PC board any simpler than
that. I never said that an automatic tool should be easy to
write. I said that one could make a useful tool that would use
a mouse to locate and draw( snap would be nice ). One would
simply trace the pdf or what ever with the mouse.
Dwight
Received on Thu Nov 21 2002 - 16:14:01 GMT