Peter Clifton wrote: <snip/> > We have a problem at CUED with various different formats / "types" of > gerber, and no means to panelise them effectively. <snip/> > The thought occurred to me that gerbv is happy enough reading all of the > above, and all the primitives themselves will probably translate pretty > well into PCB primitives. (As I mentioned above, the commercial software > which gets used at CUED can import compatible gerbers). >
So, I'm confused. Which problem are you trying to solve? Panelizing, or pcb file format conversion? gerbv has the potential to be a much more powerful tool. First off, I'd like to see a print capability added, so that I could get check plots out of gerbv. (Yes, pcb produces check plots, but when we get a gerber from someplace else, gerbv is the natural place to print check plots.) Then, following up on Peter's 2nd comment, since gerbv has a robust gerber reader, it would be a great platform for plugins. If there were an API that allowed a plug-in to walk the gerber file data structures we could implement all manner of translators, checkers, and back-end tools that could accept gerber from anyplace. This would be valuable to me in creating a paste stencil back-end, for instance. Panelizing is independent functionality from the other two, also good. I'd certainly want the ability to print check plots directly from gerbv to go with it. -dave _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
