Excellon and Gerber tweaking


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Thread: Excellon and Gerber tweaking

  1. #1
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    Default Excellon and Gerber tweaking

    I use WinQCad (www.WinQCad.com) to generate my PCB layouts. I've been using photolithography methods so far and its worked great. It also generates 274X gerbers and Excellon drill files so I downloaded a few Cam demos and tried loading them to see what I get.

    Two problems I've run into:

    First, the drill sizes are always 10 times larger than they're supposed to be (350 mil instead of 35 etc). I've tried playing with the leading zero settings which seems to only result in all holes disappearing. Here's the tool section of the excellon file

    M48
    INCH,LZ
    T01C000300
    T02C000350
    T03C000570
    %

    What should I change it to in order for (most) Cam software to read this as 30 mil, 35 mil, and 570 mil?

    Second is unwanted text in the gerber. QCad includes registration marks and text that are useful for photo processing but useless and time consuming to route. Anyone know any software that I can use indicate and remove these entities?

    Thanks for any assistance you can render!

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  2. #2
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    Default

    Actually, I stumbled across a method of editing the gerber indirectly.

    I use the Cam software to load the gerber then save as a DXF file. Rasplot (free from US FEMA) includes a nice simple DXF editor in which I erase the parts I don't want. Save as DXF again then, reload into the CAM software. Toss in the Excellon file and its raring to go!

    Now I just have to figure out how the heck the drill sizes are supposed to be formatted for these Cam packages to read them properly. Sure, easy enough to change the drill sizes manually in the Cam package but, I'd rather edit the excellon then never have to worry about it again.



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Excellon and Gerber tweaking

Excellon and Gerber tweaking