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Convert Gerber into PDF file

terrylau

Is there any way, or steps to do it, in SKILL to convert all the Gerber files into a single pdf file with multiple pages?

  • Hi,

    That is certainly possible. However it's not a trivial exercise. Let me know if ou need some hints as to how to achive this using Skill (and some other utilities).

    Cheers, Dave

  • Sure. You write a routine to read and decode the gerber data into a data structure, then write a routine to encode and write the data in PDF format. Simple? No. Easy? No (unless you have the PDF format manual and the Gerber RS274C specification and a couple months to read them). Efficient, Absolutely not. :@

    My opinion: Just because you CAN do something does not necessarily make it the best solution. Nor does it make SKILL the best language to do it in. Since both formats are saved on a disk, write it in another general purpose language (python comes to mind since it's supposed to be good with graphic manipulation), sell it, and retire to Tahiti. :)

    My suggestion: Use a third party tool such as GCPrevue or Viewmate to load the gerbers, then print them to an accrobat print queue (you can set this up when you buy the accrobat editor). Voila! Doesn't automate too well though. We use ghostscript and some of the built-in capabilities of linux to just print the layers out of Allegro in postscript format, then concatenate and merge them into a multipage document. Ugly, but automated :}

    --
    George Patrick
    Tektronix, Inc.
  • Yes please... I would appreciate any inputs/hints or suggestions of third party utilities/converters along the way. By the way, I am using pdf995 as my pdf printer at the moment.

  • There are a number of ways to do this by converting Gerber to other formats and then using a writer to create a pdf document.

    I would do it using SVG graphics and the free Apache FOP PDF converter. It would be easier to generate SVG graphics from Allegro directly than to convert Gerbers but either method is do-able.

    Short of me writing it for you, your best course of action is firstly to decide how worthwhile this is - it's a relatively big task. And, if you decide to continue, study up on XSL FO. Once you understand that the next task is converting Gerber (or Allegro objects) into SVG within an XSL FO structure and, finally, converting that using FOP.

     Good luck.

    Dave

  • The folks at artwork.com have a nifty utility to convert Gerber (RS274X and RS274D) to Postscript (levels 1 and 2).  See http://artwork.com/gerber/gbrplot/gbrplot.htm.  It's not free, but does a great job.  It works well and insures that the PDF looks EXACTLY like the artwork.  We been using it for over 10 years and have automated the Gerber to PDF using this as a pipeline. 

    Hope this helps.

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