Advanced Design System: Importing gerber files generated from eagle CAD into ADS

[Evergreen12]

Hi all,

I have been trying to import Gerber files generated from eagle CAD into ADS for use and had no success in doing so. Does anyone know whether if ADS has some form of importer like Altium's import wizard function?

Regards
Evergreen12

 

[marce]

Does it say in the manual or help files that it can import Gerber data?

 

[RealAEL]

In the layout view pick File > Import... and select the "Gerber/Drill" File type.

 

[Evergreen12]

marce, it is written that ADS is able to import Gerber/Drill files.

RealAEL. I am using ADS 2016 and the Gerber file types for import are based on Gerber X2 format althought the standard Gerber file types (.gtl /.gbl etc) works as well. However, eagle CAD generates Gerber file types which are different (.ger /.gpi) which i have tried importing multiple times but with no luck. An error will always occur at the end of the import process and nothing will be imported.

I guess my question is whether if anyone knows ADS has some form of importer tool or extension to resolve this. For Altium, i am aware that it has an import wizard for a wide array of file types generated by other CAD tools

 

[marce]

How are the Gerber files different, they are either going to be the old style Gerber with aperture tables or the newer type Gerbil with embedded apertures, I would have thought Eagle could output both...

 

[mtwieg]

The extensions on the files (.gpi, .gbo, .gtx, .bot, etc) don't actually indicate anything about the gerber version. Different PCB CAD programs generate gerber files with different extensions, but their only purpose is to give the user a clue as to which layer they represent. So any of them should be usable, so long as you correctly keep track of the layers.

But I don't know if Eagle is capable of exporting to gerber X2. I'm sure ADS will be able to work with 274x, which is still the industry standard.