Hi
I was recently successful in panelizing KiCad output Board with other cad
output boards in one panel by using GerbMerge.
I am posting the steps I took to achieve this.
(Had it been all KiCad boards, i would have used the append board option within
KiCad.)
In the process I found that the KiCad excellon drill file is not acceptable to
either GerbMerge or Gerbv.
("Gerbv" shows excellon drill files, which kicad's internal Gerber Viewer
(gerbview) does not show, i think. it is a feature request please.)
Steps---
1. Create Gerbers from KiCad.
2. Create Drill file with settings -
# Drill Units: inches
# Zeros Format: supress leading zeros
# Precision: Either 2.3 or 2.4
# Drill Origine: Absolute
# Drill Sheet: None
# Mirror Y Axis: OFF
# Minimal Header: ON Drill file from KiCad with following settings -
(reference: http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?t=1980 )
- the .drl file produced by these settings is acceptable to gerbv, and shows
out correctly, however editing this file is required for it to work with
GerbMerge as follows.
* Edit the excellon (.drl) file
(a) to remove code: G05
after first % and before T01
(b) to remove: T0
before the the M30, which is at the end of file.
Now all the KiCad files can be read by GerbMerge.
--caution: I dont know if removing these codes harm the standard format. They
"looked" ok to me after generation.
Tool T0 was not defined so Gerbmerge did not like it.
I dont know why Gerbmerge did not like G05.
(can anybody explain both) ?
Any pointers on this shall be helpful. Thank you.
References:
GerbMerge
http://claymore.engineer.gvsu.edu/~steriana/Python/gerbmerge/
Gerbv
http://gerbv.sourceforge.net/
Best Regards
Vivek
--
If bored watch my robot dance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqlawTD_9B0
