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Free Gerber AND Drill-data viewer?

UlfK

I have a habit of always wanting to make a check of the generated Gerber files

to see that what I wanted to be included really is there. For many years I have been using Pentalogix ViewMate

knowing that this viewer has never been able to display the drill data (.DRL) in a correct scale visavi

the artwork.

The other day, I got a comment from a co-worker who also complained about this and then I remembered

why I never bother to even try displaying the drill files.

I would like to use a free independent viewer that can do this.

Any suggestions? 

  • probably dating myself but there is a command that you can run called gbplot that will convert an artwork file into a plot file so that you can print it. I seem to remember that there is something similar with an ncdrill file but cannot remember the command. Not a viewer but an option if you ever need it.

  • I have been using gerbv for years, the only issue is it assumes the drill files are in 2.4 format, so you may need to modify the drill layer data format to get the correct scaling

  • I use ViewMate and always bring in the drill files.  One method that I've found that works well is to zip everything and then import the zip file.  ViewMate will read in your gerber layers, and figure out the board size from there, and then it applies it's "best guess" for the scaling of the drill file to match the gerbers.  This only works if you are either "all-imperial" or "all-metric" dimensions, as no matter how many times you move a decimal around when converting between metric and imperial, it won't be right.  BUT, if that's not how you generate your gerbers/drills, when you import the gerber files as a zip, it gives you an option to not only edit  but also preview the scaling and units of any of the files that it's "guessing".  These files are shown in green on the zip import screen.

  • The Viewmate freebe will import drills and routes aligned and scaled to the Gerber correctly. If not, I believe its in the settings coming out of the PCB editor. If you are working in millimeters your artwork, NC drill and routes have to be outputted in millimeters as well. Also verify artwork and NC formats are set properly as well. The settings I use for millimeters with design accuracy (2)  are to set to 4/3 for both the artwork and NC info. I believe if you are using Mils or inches make both the artwork and the NC formats the same to allow proper importing into Viewmate   

    Good luck, Cheers

  • in reply to S0undman99

    I have not downloaded a possibly newer version of the Pentalogix Viewmate for some years.

    The free version that I am using has the .ZIP-file import menu choise grayed out, so I cannot test this.

    From other posts in this forum I also read about proper output format. I switched over to metric units ages ago

    but even before that the drill data did not import correctly. (And of course - All data uses metric format.)

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