Has anybody had the problem, that the Eurocircuits online PCB viewer swaps the top and bottom copper layers on an uploaded gerber set from a KiCad project?
I have surface mounted components on the top side in KiCad and ground plane only on the bottom, and all silkscreen (called “legend” by Eurocircuits) is correctly shown on the top by Eurocircuits, but the copper pads and traces for the SMD components goes on the bottom layer and the ground plane that was bottom in KiCad itself is shown as top copper…
I will, if needed, make a test project that I can publish, test various versions of KiCad and contact Eurocircuits themselves, later when I have the time, but wanted to put out the question here first to hear if it is already a known problem, and whether it is also manufactured wrong or if it is just shown wrong but manufactured right…
Can you post some screenshots? Both from the project in KiCad, and the viewer of Eurocircuits? As a test case, you can for example use one of KiCad’s demo projects. There is no need to create a new test case for this.
Main goal is to exclude simple user error, such as misinterpreting layer names. But if there is an error, then it may also depend on exact export settings, and the file format used.
Yesterday I had a short peek at the Eurocircuits website and saw you can upload zip files or direct KiCad PCB files. I don’t know if that is a new feature for them or not (New features are more likely to be buggy). But apparently you used Gerbers, and especially with the X2 variant, the use of each gerber layer is embedded in the Gerber files. The copper layers have unusual names (“top_copper”, instead of the default “F.Cu”). This should not matter, but who knows… It is also not clear to me from the Eurocircuits screenshot why it thinks that should be the top (or bottom) layer. Contacting Eurocircuits themselves may be the best way to resolve this.
Unrelated, but worth mentioning: In your last screenshot you do not have the “Gerber X2” format selected for the drill file format. Also, sending the PCB in metric format and the drill file in Banana units is a bit weird.
Good catch with the banana uints. I hadn’t noticed, just used whatever came up as default.
I wonder if KiCad remembers it, either for the user or for the project. I do not remember to have ever touched those units on this particular install, though…
The X2 option and metric units did not change the wrong layer order as interpreted by Eurocircuits (which I expected it not to do).
I’ve been uploading (V7) kicad_pcb files direct to Eurocircuits for ages without issue. I also get then to assemble boards so it avoids the need for a cpl file as well. The whole process, based on my experiance with them, is just so such better that using gerbers.
When I upload the test project above as a zipped KiCad project, without gerber files, it is interpreted correctly, with the top and bottom layers like they are shown in KiCad itself.
(I don’t know in what version the project was created, but apparently not the 8.99 nightly at least. If I try to upload a project created in 8.99 nightly Eurocircuits refuses to interpret it and says that the KiCad version is not supported.)
Edit: According to version info in the kicad_pcb file (see below) the uploaded project is created with KiCad 7.99 file format version 20231231.
The layers are assigned correctly. If not you can alway reassign them in the layer editor. But .kicad_pcb files only have worked for me for years without issues.
Any KiCad version in the form x.99 is from the nightly (daily?) builds, and should always be regarded with a healthy dose of suspicion. They are not a good choice for potentially debugging the interface with Eurocircuits.
There is no KiCad V7.11 It’s easy to make the assumption you probably meant V7.0.11, but I don’t like making assumptions like that.
