I have Unisoft to convert Gerbers to CAD. There is a problem. All components must be digitized manually. Then by using the schematic, connect all components by net manually.
Depend on the quantity of components, it takes a lot of time to complete. Sometimes, it's about a week or more.
Can I ask, on CAM350, you import gerber and export CAD data? or have to do similar steps as above?
Andy, what are you trying to achieve from all this? What is the end result wanted?
Are you wanting to get the Gerbers into a PCB CAD package so that you can modify it etc?
Are you reverse engineering a board?
Gerbers alone do not carry the required information to allow you to do this, you need to create a netlist to provide the inter connectivity between the layers.
CAM350 can extract a netlist if you setup the layers & drill data correctly however you still need to import this into your PCB package to connect up the components that you also need in your library.
Whatever method you choose will employ a certain amount of manual manipulation (ie A LOT).
In CAM350 you will have to create footprints, set up layers, extract a netlist etc... all good fun.....
I took your advises and got CAM350. I did some research, I can use CAM350 to extract a netlist. Manually digitize components. Then it can export to CAD format ( GenCAD, Pads, ...).
The CAD format, the flying probe needs it.
It takes time to study CAM350. But at least, I have a tool. Thank you very much for your input.
Speaking from recent experience, the forums are so heavily screened and edited they're not very useful and not very well attended by the general public. Honestly the edaboard is probably a better resource if their demonstration videos leave unanswered questions.
The problem I ran into is that my organization has CAM350-115 (the last 3 digits Downstream refers to as the configuration) and this configuration does not have a lot of the features they demo. I think the demo's should have a disclaimer up front about the configurations as following along became pretty confusing when my SW started to diverge from what they were showing.
Allow me to point out the caveat I placed in my response: "...if their demonstration videos leave unanswered questions." My point is that the number of posts on their forum is extremely small for software that has been around as long as theirs has. It's simply not that well attended compared to this forum, for example. And again, the videos don't mention a critical fact that there are different configurations which are feature-crippled and it is not at all intuitive to determine which configuration is even installed.
Of course there are unanswered questions in videos, there always are in any video.
What you bought, or the bean counters bought was exactly what they paid for - you can buy the full product or a reduced product.
You bought the reduced one, if you only have a reduced package then you have to ignore the bits in the videos that have tools that the reduced products do not have.