Hawaslsh
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Hello All,
I am relatively new to PCB layout and fabrication and our small company doesn't have access to much, well any, real layout software. As painful as it is to layout a GCPW board with autoCAD we managed. The only problem that arose was trying to define and give the PCB manufactures the via hole locations and sizes. I realize there is an industry standard and I spend the past few days playing within free versions of different layout tools but haven't found an automated way to created an excellon or other drill file using the drawing we made. All the vias, in the dwg or dxf files, were drawn as circles with a center and radius. I have also tried a few smaller designs with points to define the centers. Is there a method / software out there which can generate a drill file from this format or is it necessary I go back and place drill holes by hand over each circle or point within a proper layout tool?
follow up question. when I run a gerber translator on the dxf files and view gerber outputs, circles and points don't appear. I can only make multi-sided polygons appear. Is this normal?
Thanks in advance,
Sam
I am relatively new to PCB layout and fabrication and our small company doesn't have access to much, well any, real layout software. As painful as it is to layout a GCPW board with autoCAD we managed. The only problem that arose was trying to define and give the PCB manufactures the via hole locations and sizes. I realize there is an industry standard and I spend the past few days playing within free versions of different layout tools but haven't found an automated way to created an excellon or other drill file using the drawing we made. All the vias, in the dwg or dxf files, were drawn as circles with a center and radius. I have also tried a few smaller designs with points to define the centers. Is there a method / software out there which can generate a drill file from this format or is it necessary I go back and place drill holes by hand over each circle or point within a proper layout tool?
follow up question. when I run a gerber translator on the dxf files and view gerber outputs, circles and points don't appear. I can only make multi-sided polygons appear. Is this normal?
Thanks in advance,
Sam
