How to Load Drill Files to GerbView Using a Gerber Job File (*.gbrjob)?

Layout Gerbers (GerbView)
1

KiCAD 8.09 on Win10

I created a schematic and layout in KiCAD. I plotted Gerber files and Drill Files using the “Fabrication Outputs” menu, and checked the “Generate Gerber job file” option on the Gerber menu.

I loaded the files into the KiCAD Gerber viewer (GerbView) by opening the Gerber job file (*.gbrjob). All of the Gerber layers opened without incident. However, the drill data was not there. This wasn’t surprising, since the *.gbrjob file was generated by the Gerber export menu, not the Drill File export menu.

I opened the *.gbrjob file in a text editor (Notepad ++). The format and syntax seem pretty straightforward, and Ucamco publishes detailed file specs. In the “FilesAttributes” section I added the lines:

    {
      "Path": "7_Seg_Lo_Pwr_V1_C-PTH.drl",
      "FileFunction": "Plated,1,2,PTH",
      "FileFormat": "NC"
    },
    {
      "Path": "7_Seg_Lo_Pwr_V1_C-NPTH.drl",
      "FileFunction": "NonPlated,1,2,NPTH",
      "FileFormat": "NC"
    }

I thought this would point GerbView to the drill files. It seems to find the files, but for each drill file it throws a LONG list of errors of the form:
Unexpected char 0x52
and one instance of:
G00 command not handled
The drill files are listed in GerbView’s “Layer Manager”, but the layers are completely blank on the display.

What is the correct way to specify drill files in the *gbrjob file? Yeah, I can go to GerbView’s “File” menu and manually load the drill files after loading the Gerber layers, but I’m a lazy geezer who would rather have my Personal Confuser do that task for me.

There is a thread at Errors in viewing drill files which suggests that this may not be possible. If that is the case I would consider it a shortcoming in GerbView which deserves correcting. After all, GerbView can load Gerber files, and can load drill files in the same window, so why can’t it load both types from a Gerber Job file?

2

It seems it works if you generate Gerber X2 drill files but not Excellon drill files.

Screenshot_20250317_174741
Screenshot_20250317_1747411095×1008 72.3 KB

Might be a deficiency worth reporting.

1 Like
3

Thanks for the help! That worked for me. I’m a bit nervous about doing a final review based on a Gerber X2 drill file when our etch and drill vendors want to see an Excellon file, but this will suffice for now.

Out of curiosity, what are the lines in your *.gbrjob file which specify the drill files?

4

Just a different file path IIRC. Which suggests that autodetection isn’t active.

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