Re: Circuit Board Layout Program(s)

Hello Alan, List,

The program Ztrace, sold by Chuck Heater of Digital Design
Technology, is a gerber to hpgl "outline" program. It is designed to
work with Chucks' Plotcam pcb milling program. I think the manual is
online; it may be helpful.

Chuck also sells stepper drives, and has some port software shareware
on his website. He IS a "rocket scientist"<G>, working in FL.

Hope this helps.

Ballendo

P.S. Circad, by Holophase,also in FL, will output trace outlines. It
is a full-feature ECAD system, with schematic capture, netlist,
autorout, etc. Relatively inexpensive, considering its power. Very
simple to use.

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@y..., Jon Elson <elson@p...> wrote:
> Alan Marconett KM6VV wrote:
>
> >
> > Thanks for the comments. Any other thoughts on converting Gerber
files?
> >
>
> Well, I wrote a 20,000 line or so program that reads Gerber (RS-
274D)
> files with most features supported (It still doesn't do arcs,
similar to a
> G02 or G03) and creates a raster bitmap to drive my photoplotter.
> It is in Pascal, and is fairly specialized for raster creation,
rather than
> putting a netlist back together, which is what you are pretty much
doing.
>
> Some cad software will make multiple stripes of smaller apertures to
> build up the 'pen' width to make a track that is not supported by an
> aperture. This could drive your software nuts. (And, it might
drive
> YOU nuts trying to figure out an algorithm that can handle that
special
> case.)
>
> I have also done a little bit of work in this general area, such as
converting
> Excellon drill files (which look a LOT like the Gerber dialect of
RS-274D)
> to pure, industry-standard "G-code", and then drilling my boards on
> my mill. I have programs, again in Pascal, to convert Excellon
files
> to Allen-Bradley 7320-style G-code (mostly no decimal point) and
> to EMC-style G-code.
>
> I also have a couple little programs that will output fractal
figures in
> either Gerber format or G-code for engraving the lines. See
> http://pico-systems.com/artwork.html for pictures of some of them.
> This is black Plexiglas. The top one is filled with orange crayon,
and
> actually looks pretty nice up close.
>
> Jon