thanks Ian, for the advice! i've decided to use Camtastic to merge the
gerber files from the two separate protel layouts. I moved one of the
boards (in protel, relative to the origin) so that it is positioned
properly relative to the other board when i load the gerbers into camtastic
(i created the gerbers with the "absolute coordinates" option instead of
the "center on film" option to make this work).
i've got most everything figured out, but i've got one question left: as i
mentioned before, one of the boards has 4 power planes and 2 signal layers,
and the other board has 4 signal layers and two power planes. I've decided
to deal with the problem (of reverse copper vs. positive copper) by
changing two of the power plane layers (on the board with 4 planes) into
signal layers and putting a polygon pour on that layer. Now i've noticed
that the connections from the vias to the pour on the signal layer are
directly connected, that is to say, no thermal relief pattern. Anyone know
how to change this? alternatively, does anyone have another suggested way
to do this? (i.e. maybe inverting the gerber in camtastic somehow?) or is
it really a big deal? forgive my naivete, but i'm not exactly sure what
the purpose of the thermal relief is (keeping the power plane from getting
too hot ?) and if i could stand to live without them in this case.
thanks again for any advice,
-rimas
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