How to reduce the gerber files to the board edge?

Layout Gerbers (GerbView)
1

When generating PDF doc with board drawings i get a single layer per page but without any additional information for example which layer it is. With multi-layer boards it might be hardly readable if there is no info about which layer i’m currently watching. I fink the easiest way is to add additional text on each layer i’m printing like “cooper front”, “cooper internal 6” or “fabrication”. But the problem is that in case of cooper layers those texts are added to the output gerber files and i don’t want that…

I think it will be great to have an option to limit the generated gerber files to the edge of the board.
Or maybe somebody knows some simple solution for that ?

2

Using KiBot you can extensively customize the output of documentation, including outputting the layer names.

However, I doubt any fab will get too confused if you have text outside the board area in the gerbers.

3

Some people mark the (copper) layers on a PCB with numbers on the PCB itself, and often put those numbers inside little squares. Each number (with it’s square) then has a little offset, so the numbers appear in sequence on the PCB. Usually also solder mask and copper fill is removed from the whole area of those numbers, so you can look “deeper” into the PCB. FR4 is quite transparent and this way the layers can be seen from the outside. And because these numbers are on the PCB itself, they also appear on any gerber files or printed documentation.

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