> I have done three two layer boards with PCB and PCBExpress and have not had > any problems with Gerbers (no soldermask or silkscreen). Did your > files look OK when you viewed them with gerbv? I have also done a > four layer board with PCBExpress using Eagle without any issues (no > soldermask or silkscreen).
The files mostly looked fine in gerbv. One of the two solder mask layers got me complaints about a missing aperture, and there was one line that was obviously different that seemed to omit the aperture (I think this was the first aperture in the file), so I cloned the one that didn't have those errors to the other one, and fixed the descriptive comments at the top so that they stayed different. (This is a thru hole only board, no surface mount parts, which seems to imply that the mask layers ought to be identical to each other.) I'm running pcb-1.99j out of debian unstable, compiled on netbsd, which might not be the optimal choice; there was a bug in the sourceforge bug tracking system which seemed like it could have been the bug I saw. > With PCBExpress I use a script that merges the two drill files. I ended up merging the two files by hand. Given that pcbexpress claims to not guarentee that copper will stay out of any holes anyway, I probably could have just made pads of the approprite size where I just needed mounting holes for the Kycon ST-3100-3C. But I only noticed this after I'd placed all of the components, and changing it would be kind of tedious.
