gerber files neede forpick and place
I too find this chaps replies to be wrong too.
I have been using Graphicodes GC-Place for a great many years to produce pick & place files from Gerbers only.
In fact, creating them from Gerber data is the ONLY way to accuratly create them.
Fair enough, the PCB design program can create pick & place data for 1 board, but when it's in a panel as they usually are, you need to add offsets, step & repeat etc.
When a board is converted into Gerber data & then read in by the different programs, there are often very small calculation & conversion errors that can make the dimensions slightly different to what was intended.
This is what get's used to make the board, not the original CAD data.
GC-Place takes the panel of data, automatically extracts component footprints & thier centroids form the pads, solder paste, solder resist or plain pads.
Rotations are automatic or easily adjusted, component references can be easily & automatically identified from the silkscreen or smt assembly layers.
Parts information can easily be imported using the BOM import tools & a simple BOM text file or even manually added.
And then there a whole host of output filters depending upon your P&P machine enabling you to create an accurate pick & place file.
So both House_cat & Crenyan are wrong in what they say.
Fair enough, you can output more information from the CAD software, but as the P&P machines usually have extra info like component height programmed into them you do not need it in the P&P software.
Component name, X, Y, rotation, part number are enough to make a board.
Panel fiducials are not available in the CAD software yet can be extracted from the panels Gerber data, component fiducials can too.
SO to answer the original question., the answer is YES.
I usually take about 20 mins to create data for a 12 up panel of board that have 100 components on, so it's not that time consuming.
Now if only I could charge such high amounts for that 20 mins.