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For turning great ideas into real products, you need design tools that won’t limit your imagination or hold you back. CircuitMaker has all the power you need to design high quality schematics and Printed Circuit Boards, with no artificial limits on layer counts or board area. Best of all it’s free.
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Cadence OrCAD PCB Designer is capable of opening the file types listed below. Conversion between the file types listed below is also possible with the help of Cadence OrCAD PCB Designer. You can find more information about it in the application's manual. KiCAD is a Cross-Platform and Open Source Electronics Design Automation Suite. It includes a schematic editor for creating and editing schematic designs, a PCB Editor for making professional PCB layouts with up to 32 copper layers, and a 3D viewer which can be used to inspect the design in a 3D form.
Eli Hughes
Wavenumber LLC.
How to open PCB files. If you cannot open the PCB file on your computer - there may be several reasons. The first and most important reason (the most common) is the lack of a suitable software that supports PCB among those that are installed on your device. A very simple way to solve this problem is to find and download the appropriate application. PCB file openers, viewers, etc. These apps are known to open certain types of PCB files. Remember, different programs may use PCB files for different purposes, so you may need to try out a few of them to be able to open your specific file.
CircuitMaker is the 1st free PCB tool I have encountered that has features of a professional design tool. A tool that is backed by people who know EDA means that we can finally have something for those of us who want to get things done without being obstructed by complicated installation, a horrible user interface or a mess of a library system. Couple this with that fact that making is also about collaborating and sharing. The folks at CircuitMaker have unique vision about creating a platform, not just a barebones tool for those who aspire to be “mad engineers”.
Roberto Lo Giacco
Professional Engineer
Finally some fresh air in the EDA market: a modern interface with some really pro capabilities and no serious limitation. This is the tool any electronics maker was waiting for and it is community focused.
Nicholas Rabault
The Poppy Project
Poppy is an open-source platform for the creation, use and sharing of interactive 3D printed robots. We love CircuitMaker because it offers the possibility of our community to contribute easily. We can promote our board model by sharing a simple link to a release. Users can produce themselves our design directly or by forking it to adapt it to their needs. Mechanical integration is a really important factor in robotics so the 3D modeling in CircuitMaker enables that.
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Released:
Extension for pcb-tools package to panelize gerber files
Project description
pcb-tools-extension is a Python library to panelize gerber files.This library is designed based on pcb-tools which provides cool functionality to handle PCB such as generationg PCB image from gerber files.
pcb-tools-extension adds following function to pcb-tools.
- Rotate PCB data
- Write back loaded PCB data (original pcb-tools does not work in some condition)
- Merge multiple PCB data
- Translate DXF file to PCB data
Only RS-274x format and Excellon drill format data can be handled by current version of this library.
Installation
You can install a stable version by following step.
If you have a intention to try latest developing version, please install as follows.
How to panelize
Following code is a example to panelize two top metal layer files.
rotate() method can be used to rotate PCB data counterclockwise. you have to specify angle in degree.offset() method can be used to move PCB data. Specified offset values are interpreted according to unit setting of PCB data. In case of the above code, board2.gtl move to 30mm left since to_metric() is called.
In case of Excellon drill data, you have to use DrillCompositon instead of GerberComposition.
DXF file translation
pcb-tools-extension hsa a function to load a DXF file and handle that as same as RX-274x gerber file or Excellon NC file.
In this version, Only line, circle, arc, and polyline objects are recognized and are translated to gerber file or NC file.
Two way to tranlate DXF file
Both composition objects, GerberComposition for RX-274x and DrillionComposition for Excellon, can accept an object created as result of DXF file loaded. When composition object dump text stream, DXF data tranclate to appropriate format data.
The object which represent DXF file, can also output translated data directly by save method. In this case output format is specified by filetype argument. If filetype argument is ommited, DXF data is translated to RX-274x gerber data.
Pcb File Format
Generating Rectangle
If you want to arrange simple rectangle for PCB outline, gerberex.rectangle() is better solution. This generate a object representing a rectangle compatible with DXF file object.
Drawing Mode
Open Pcb File Online
PCB tools extension provide three type of translation method that affects geometric finish. These method are specified a value for draw_mode attribute, as DM_LINE, DM_MOUSE_BITES, or DM_FILL.DM_LINE and DM_MOUSE_BITES are used to translate to both of RX-274x and Excellon, however DM_FILL is used to translate to only RX-274x.
draw_mode = DM_LINE
All edge expressed as DXF line object, circle object, arc object and plyline objects are translated to line and arc applied a circular aperture in case of RX-274x. That circular aperture radius is specified bywidthattribute. Default value of width is 0.
In case of Excellon, DXF objects are translated to routing path command sequence.
This function is useful to generate outline data of pnanelized PCB boad.draw_mode = DM_MOUSE_BITES
If DM_MOUSE_BITES is specified for draw_mode, filled circles are arranged at equal intervals along a paths consisted of DXF line, arc, circle, and plyline objects.DXF file object in this state can be merged to excellon file also. That means you can arrange mouse bites easily.draw_mode = DM_FILL
You can translate DXF closed shapes such as circle to RX-274x polygon fill sequence.
In order to fill closed shapes,DM_FILLhas to be set todraw_modeproperty. In this mode, All object except closed shapes listed below are ignored.- circle
- closed polyline
- closed path which consists of lines and arcs
If a closed shape is completly included in other closed shape, The inner shape will be draw with reversed polality of container shape as above example image.
I assume there are two typical use cases for this mode.
One is to arrange logo design on silk layer. This is superior to other method generating raster image data since image data express as vector data.
The other one is generating gerber data represented cropped area of panelized PCB.By merging rectangle and PCB outline data, generate a file represented cropped area as below, and this kind of data is useful to make PCB image look good a little bit.
This script which generate example image shown below, also uses this technic.NOTE:
DM_FILLcan be used only to generate RX-274x data, it cannot be used to generate Excellon data.
Panelizing Example
This example board image is generated by following scripts from these source data.
Notes
Equivalence of output
pcb-tools-extension generate data block stream to focus equivalence of final image, but not focus equivalence of data block sequence.There are some difference between input data and output data as below.
Aperture definition [RS-274x]
When gerber data is rotated, it's necessory to rotate not only coordinates whilch indicate locations of drawing aperture, but also aperture geometory itself.However, standard aperture templates, such as rectangle, cannot rotate. These standard aperture templates can be placed only horizontally or vertically.
Threfore, pcb-tools-extension replace aperture definitions using standard aperture template to aperture macro that represent equivalent shape.
For example, In case of rotating folowing aperture definition 20 degrees counter clockwise,pcb-toolse-extension generate a aperture macro definition and a aperture definition referencing that macro as below.
File Scope Modifier [RS-274x]
Commands that affect entire image and should be specified only once in a file, such asMI(Mirror Image) command, sometimes cause contradiction when multiple gerber file are merged.
For example, when mergeing a file containing%MIA1B0*%command and a file containing%MIA0B1*command, which command should remain as output?Of cause, it is impossible that generate correct merged image by specifiing anyMIcommand.
pcb-tools-extension translate coordinate data reflecting these file socpe modifier to address this probrem, then ommit these modifier command.MI,OF,SF,AS,IP, andIRare in a this category.Coodinate Normalizing [RS-274x, Excellon]
RS-274x specification and Excellon specification allow various notation to express a coordinate. However pcb-tools-extension normalize coordinate notation in order to correct deprecated notation and ease internal process as below.- Relative coordinates are translated to absolute coordinates.
- Ommited coordinate values are compensated.
- Leading zeros are ommited.
Single Quadlant mode [RS-274x]
Cercular interpolation coordinate data in single quadlant is difficult to rotate, because circular arc may pass across two quadlants after rotation.
In order to avoid this problem, pcb-tools-extension change single quadlant mode coordinates specification to multi quadlangt mode.NC controll command [Excellon]
Form histrical reason, Excellon NC controll format is used to specify drill information to PCB fabricator.
On the other hand, from PCB fabricator point of view, they don't need information other than geometric information, such as drill speed. Because these NC controll sequence doesn't send to NC machine directly, PCB fabricator import customers excellon NC file to their CAD / CAM to pnaelize and check, then they export NC controll data for their NC machine.
pcb-tools-extension ommit all NC command which do not contribute to geometry expression. Specifically, only tool definitions (diametor of drill), tool selections, drilling coordinates, and routing paths are output.Unimportant Command [RS-274x, Excellon]
Commands not affecting final image such as comment are ommited.
Negative image polarity
Sometimes, %IPNEG*% is specified at header of RS-274x file to create negative image.
As mentioned above, IP command is ommited when pcb-tools-extension generate output file. In this case, image polarity is nagated by using LP command. However this generated file doesn't equal to original image since it does'nt contain base dark image.
Please merge base dark rectangle explicitly when you handle negative image file as below.
Limitations
RS-274x
pcb-tools-extension cannot handle all commands that the RS-274x parser implemented inpcb-tools doesn't handle so far.
From the imaging point of view, pcb-tools-extension has following limitations.
- Files contains
IJandIOcommands, that affect entire image, cannot be handled correctly. - Files contains
SRcommand to specify repeated pattern cannot be handled correctly. - Aperture block defined by
ABcommand cannot be handled correctly.
Excellon
pcb-tools-extension extends excellon parser in pcb-tools to support routing operation. However following limitations still remain.
- User defined stored pattern defined by
M99command cannot be handled. - Canned text specified by
M97command cannot be handled. - Pattern defined by
M25command cannot be handled.
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0.9.3
0.9.2
0.9.1
0.9.0
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0.1.5
0.1.4
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