I have a serious problem. A couple of varsity friends of mine and I are wanting to get PCB’s manufactured. Each of our boards are 2 layer boards. We all used different programs to populate the PCB. I chose kiCad.
In order to save on manufacturing costs, we wish to include all of our boards on the same gerber file for manufacture submission. HERE’s THE PROBLEM:
Because all of our files have different layer naming conventions, given that we all used different design software; Gerber Viewer is interpreting each board as completely different layers! Thus we land up with multiple layer boards.
Is there anyway to fix this without redoing everything? IE, my friends solder mask is the same as my solder mask, and my friends front copper layers are on the same layer as my front copper layer?
PLEASE HELP. It’s urgent and I am quite desperate.
download gerbv https://sourceforge.net/projects/gerbv/
or via package installer of your distro if you’re on linux
you can export merged gerber from gerbv.
make sure you offset the layers properly. e.g. your top copper is of dimension 10 x 10, second top copper should start its origin beyond this…
I have to do this. The manufacturer in South Africa will charge a lot of money per board if I don’t do it this way. I need to combine them onto the same gerber file
Whilst I really appreciate the input - it really doesn’t help to just comment with further problems. Is there a solution to this problem? Does someone know how to combine the files onto the same board? If so, would someone be kind enough to assist, if I upload the boards that need to be combined?
I would REALLY appreciate the assistance, as I am supposed to be sending these off for manufacture today.
Do not rush this! Better to order tomorrow than to get something wrong back.
In general the idea would be to rename the gerbers to a consistent naming convention before trying to combine them. This would be done using your operating systems file browser. After all of them are renamed to a consistent style then you can combine them using whatever tool you like. Make sure you still have the originals as a backup somewhere
For the future it might be best to decide on a naming convention beforehand and hold every designer accountable for it (every tool including kicad has multiple options on how the naming style of the gerber output should look like. There is a good chance that you can find one combination that works for all tools)
As Rene said. The quote above tells us that the file names are the problem for you. Gerbers can be freely renamed, there’s no layer information inside the files (except maybe in the comments, depending on the generating software).
You seem to be paniced because you ignored our advice.
So for instance: my friends boards top copper layer is called “Copper Top Layer”, and my boards top copper layer is called “F.Cu”. If I name both of them : “Top Copper”, and open them both with GerbV, they will appear on the same layer? Am I understanding correctly?
General advice: clam down. Tell your friends that the boards will be ordered tomorrow at the earliest. Take your time and make sure you do it properly. It is of no help to anybody if you rush it and get something wrong in return.
If the deadline is indeed this hard then it might be best to take the hit in the extra cost for submitting multiple files. (You can now choose between keeping it cheap or keeping it within the deadline.)
MANY engineering tasks, at their foundation, can be accurately summarized as “Evaluate alternatives.”. Sometimes the alternatives are presented to you; sometimes you must identify them. Sometimes your evaluation is based on specified criteria; sometimes you must define the criteria.
This sounds like a school project. Does your instructor’s car need washing & waxing?
if you mail your gerbers (and excellon) to me I can merge and panelize whatever you want.
If you choose a black belted board etcher they also do
(but usually nobody like to work for free)