Gene Heskett wrote: > Greetings; > > I friend has sent me an archive of .gbr files to see what I think of the > project. Unforch, gerbview is only showing me a black, blank screen even if > I surround the filenames, which have winders spaces in them, with either > single or dbl-quotes. > > The format of the files looks legit to me, so what sort of a viewer do I need > to be able to both see these, and convert them to g-code? > > Here is the head from one of them. > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ROM Pak Board]# head -n 30 ROMPAK_Bottom.gbr > %FSTAX23Y23*% > %ICAS*% > %MOIN*% > %ADD10C,00.010*% > %ADD11C,00.012*% > %ADD12C,00.070*% > %ADD13C,00.005*% > %ADD14C,00.062*% > %ADD15C,00.030*% > %ADD16C,00.007*% > %ADD17C,00.050*% > %ADD18R,00.010X00.010*% > %ADD19R,00.062X00.062*% > > > > D10* > %LPD*%D10* > D10* > %LPD*%D10* > D10* > %LPD*%D10* > D10* > %LPD*%D10* > D10* > %LPD*%D10* > X00325Y04100D02* > X00319Y04069D01*X00308Y04038D01*X00288Y04012D01* > X00262Y03992D01*X00231Y03981D01*X00200Y03975D01*X00169Y03981D01* > X00138Y03992D01*X00112Y04012D01*X00092Y04038D01*X00081Y04069D01* > > Any idea's folks? > This IS, in fact, "G-code", although an old dialect of it, for photoplotters from Gerber Scientific. It is the industry standard for photoplotters for PCB manufacturing. Your file is in RS274-X format, where the projection apertures are in the beginning of the file, in comment form.
The lines such as %ADD10C,00.010 means that aperture D10 (just like a tool select in normal G-code) will be circular and .010" diameter. The rest of the file is in a valid dialect of G-code, with Trailing zero suppression and suppressed decimal point. All the ancient controls used to run this way, like the Allen-Bradley 7320. Anyway, that first line %FSTAX23Y23*% is the format specifier, and it says that the coordinates are absolute (same as G90 vs. G91) and that the X and Y coords are in a 2.3 format, so X00325 means X=0.325" (Actually, I think leading-zero suppression is more standard, with the FSLA format specifier.) The repeated D10* / %LPD*%D10* looks like a program bug, but it sets the "Layer Polarity", ie dark lines on clear film or clear lines on dark film. Every time a block that contains an X or Y coordinate is processed, that means a move, and the D0x tells whether to turn the light on or off while moving, or only flash at the end. D01 is move with light on D02 is move with light off D03 is flash at endpoint All of this is similar to a canned cycle in regular G-code. But, if you want to cut a PC board from this data, you need an isolation program, that converts line width on the PC board to a cut-around path for an engraving bit. It may be the format on this file is odd enough to foul up your gerb view program. Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
