It is written in Postscript as it ran on one of the Apple LaserWriter printers with a hard disk option.
The principle was to save the postscript output to a file. The converter would then replace the moveto, lineto bottlenecks and save the raw corrdinates in a simple Gerber format. The downside was that most board houses wanted the Gerber as produced by a commercial program. Usually there were probelms with the apature file. More often the reason the board house wants a full set of files is that they run parametric analysis before any copper is cut. At the time I wrote this I was still etching my own boards & using the laser printer as a toner transfer system. The need for gerber was so that one could have a drill file. There was also the need to flip and mirror the resist layer so it would be right side up. We discussed this at the meeting, It might be possible to do the same thing with Ghostscript. On the other hand it is more practical in the long run to use one of the modern commercial applications which generates a proper netlist. This hack was written over 5 years ago. Much has changed since then. Especially Express PCB which now offers schematic capture and a rather nice library of footprints. Given the current state of the economy, and how many of us are out of work, Most assembly houses are really competitive. Crippled and light versions of programs like AutoTrax and Eagle are often given away for free. On a recent project I wound up having Express do the build as it came out cheaper than the local house converting my Gerbers to what their layout guys wanted. -julieP >I read one of the posts in the archive that mentioned that "Julie" had >managed to convert ExpressPCB files to Gerber. Is it possible to get a >copy of the software that does this? >_______________________________________________ >ERPS-list mailing list >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
