CADSoft Eagle is the most popular PCB designing software amongst electronics hobbyist. The user interface is quite predictive and easy to learn. Many tutorials about learning it can be found on the internet. The one on Sparkfun's site http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/108 appears most appealing to me. The final files from the software are .sch and .brd files corresponding to the schematic and board layout respectively.
Once the pcb is designed, one would definitely like to send it for fabrication. However, the pcb manufactures generally don't have design softwares like Eagle. They would rather ask you for something called gerber files. These are a set of 7 to 10 files each of which contain data about the pcb holes, text on the pcb, routing etc. Eagle has provision for converting the .brd file into the gerber format. Following tutorial explains how.
1. Open the brd file. From menu go to File->Run and click. A file browser will open, navigate to and select drillcfg.ulp file. It will ask for units, select inch (NOT mm). A list of tools T01, T02 will show up. Just click OK. A <somename>.drl file will be saved.
2. Go to File->CAM Processor and click. A CAM processor window will open as show in the following picture.
3. From the menu, go to File->Open->Job. From the file explorer that pops up, select excellon.cam and click Process Job at the bottom. Some more files will be saved to the directory.
4. Once again go to File->Open->Job. From the file explorer that pops up, select gerb274x.cam and click Process Job at the bottom. More files will be saved to the directory.
A total of 9 files should be created with extensions : .cmp, .drd, .dri, .drl, .gpi, .plc, .sol, .stc and .sts. In case you are creating a 4 layer pcb, you should select gerb274x-4 layer in the last step. Zip all the nine files created and ship it to the manufacturer.
Once the pcb is designed, one would definitely like to send it for fabrication. However, the pcb manufactures generally don't have design softwares like Eagle. They would rather ask you for something called gerber files. These are a set of 7 to 10 files each of which contain data about the pcb holes, text on the pcb, routing etc. Eagle has provision for converting the .brd file into the gerber format. Following tutorial explains how.
1. Open the brd file. From menu go to File->Run and click. A file browser will open, navigate to and select drillcfg.ulp file. It will ask for units, select inch (NOT mm). A list of tools T01, T02 will show up. Just click OK. A <somename>.drl file will be saved.
4. Once again go to File->Open->Job. From the file explorer that pops up, select gerb274x.cam and click Process Job at the bottom. More files will be saved to the directory.
A total of 9 files should be created with extensions : .cmp, .drd, .dri, .drl, .gpi, .plc, .sol, .stc and .sts. In case you are creating a 4 layer pcb, you should select gerb274x-4 layer in the last step. Zip all the nine files created and ship it to the manufacturer.
2 comments:
Thank you so much for this!
Thank you!! Excellent tutorial with very helpful graphics.
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