I'm working on a board which requires high precision, in the submicron range. Theoretically, Protel supports photoplotting with four-place decimal metric, i.e., one-tenth micron resolution; however, I ran into some problems with PCB and with CAMtastic.
Rotated fills, which are not flashed but which are drawn, were seen to have some stray draws. I've sent files to [EMAIL PROTECTED], but for our bug list, I am also reporting the matter here. That rotated fills (and pads, I expect) are drawn instead of being flashed is a bit distressing; this board already generates a lot of data and drawing those fills will make the gerber files huge. Rectangles (and other shapes) can be created with RS-274X Aperture Macros, which include a rotation parameter. They would then also be importable as single primitives (with appropriately modified gerber import routines.) Fortunately the fills only occur on one layer which will not be fabricated with the "PCB" (it is a multilayer co-fired ceramic module) but will be added later as a separate metalization on the top of the module. Then, looking at the files in CAMtastic, the aperture tables did not properly import, there were errors in aperture creation on the order of 1.5 microns. This is a bit hard to fathom; a metric 150 micron draw embedded in RS-274X should become, one would think, a 150 micron aperture in the CAMtastic aperture table, but it doesn't, instead it is 149.9 microns. (Some other apertures had higher deviations.) I'd guess that metric apertures are being translated to inches on creation, then displayed back as metric. But the aperture tables were editable to the correct values, so it is not that the database does not support sufficient precisions. However, the maximum zoom level in CAMtastic does not provide as high a magnification as does PCB, it was barely adequate, if cramped, for working in the micron range. PCB provides plenty of magnification before it refuses to zoom in further, it looks to me like roughly 0.1 micron per pixel. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Abdulrahman Lomax Easthampton, Massachusetts USA * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/proteledaforum@techservinc.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
