I have a problem in FlatCAM with KiCad files. When converting the trace cut and excellon file to geometries they become offset from origin with an arbitrary value. There was a post on Reddit that indicated some issue with origin compatibility.
“I’ve had some success with FlatCAM, but their workflow takes a while to get used to.
You need to plot the copper layer and edge cuts to Gerber, and the drill to Excellon, using the same origin point for both (by default, Gerber uses the page corner, and Excellon uses the auxiliary axis, which is set in the page corner, so that is an interesting gotcha).
Then in FlatCAM, import these files, convert them to geometry (internal representation, basically), convert the geometry to a tool path, and then convert the tool paths to gcode (i.e. you need to process each file thrice in FlatCAM).”
Can you help me with a clearer description of how to fix this. I have created my files in KiCAD and exported the gerber file and excellon file with mm units.
Is it the gerber layer and Excellon drill files generated by Kicad having a different origin point before they are loaded into Flatcam?
When you generate the gerbers & drill file with Kicad, make sure the check boxes for the origin are set the same for both, either absolute or auxiliary.
As a last resort if you load the gerbers and excellon files into the gEDa gerbv viewer you can apply an offset to a layer to align it properly and then save the layer with the new offset position.
I am using a nightly version of Kicad compiled from source but I think the origin options for the gerber generation were the same when I was using the stable version downloaded from the Ubuntu repository.
Application: kicad
Version: (2017-10-06 revision d6c0d320d)-master, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.2
Platform: Linux 4.10.0-35-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Build Info:
wxWidgets: 3.0.2 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 2.24
Boost: 1.62.0
Compiler: GCC 6.3.0 with C++ ABI 1010