At 09:27 PM 5/17/01 +0000, Jon Elson wrote:
>Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>
>Yes, this is close to a solution, although it takes manual intervention and
>iteration until the plot outputs OK from Protel.

Mr. Cardone made a good suggestion, if one wants to supply RS-274X with 
limited-size apertures, of using CAMtastic to read an aperture-table based 
set of plots which would then be output as RS-274X. Once one had the 
procedure set up, I would expect it to be pretty easy. But, from the other 
end, eliminating large fills:

>   But, because some fills
>might
>be 10" x .150", a 1" square fill will not work.  A .150" square fill would
>work though.

In this case one would use 150x1000 mil fills, ten of them. (There should 
be no need for overlap, but the fills may overlap without harm).

>  You would have to search the entire aperture list for large
>apertures,
>delete them, and then add a few apertures that would satisfy the board house's
>
>software and Protel's need for apertures that would fit within the fills that
>are
>actually present on the board.

Protel, at present, would not use these square apertures. Yes, looking 
through an aperture table for large apertures would be one way of detecting 
large fills that would need to be broken down.

>   I often put long, narrow fills around the edge
>of
>the power and ground planes to keep the planes from extending to the edge of
>the board.

I simply place a track of the appropriate width coincident with the board 
outline. If I want 25 mil clearance, I'll place a 50 mil track, or 
sometimes I select the existing outline track and copy it to the plane 
layers, then edit it to the desired width (double the clearance). I can see 
no reason to prefer fills for this and several reasons in the other direction.

I actually use fills pretty rarely, which may explain why I never 
encountered the size restriction for some plotters that is being reported 
here. It is beyond me why a manufacturer of a raster plotter would 
incorporate a size restriction on apertures, what were they thinking?

It may have been that they were simply imitating the vector plotters.

"Vector plotters have a restriction, so we have to have a restriction too, 
can't let them have a feature we don't have.

"Unlike obsolete vector plotters, our RasterMaster supports new, larger 1 
inch apertures! Don't be fooled by our competition's advertising: they 
don't specify their aperture limitation!" :-)

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433

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