Sometimes it is easy to have layouts in colored PDFs so that we can stack the layers up and share with others, instead of sending the Gerbers. It will be also easy to import colored layers to vector softwares such Ai. Is it possible plot PCB layout as colored PDF ? As of now, the plot dialog only produces PDF files in black. I couldn’t find any options to do it in the following window.
One workaround is to “print” the layers and convert them to PDF files using a virtual printer tool. But this always produces “simplified” vector graphics which is not useful other than viewing on a paper.
I can’t tell why (just don’t remember) but when (those time in 4.0.7) I was looking how to export a picture of PCB I decided that I will not be using pdf, but Export to SVG.
SVG then can be placed at LibreOffice Writer and then exported to PDF if needed.
And it can be probably good solution for you as you need colors.
I wonted to have the output to be printed at B&W laser printer so before exporting to SVG I had to change colors to gray scale (no problem) but later to get back to original - bigger problem.
Now I use Plot to SVG (single layers) and merge them in Inkscape but it is porbably not what you are looking for.
The “others” you are sharing your files with understand how to “read a PCB” but don’t have a gerberviewer? For review purposes i don’t see why they would not be able to consume gerber. If you want to make some presentations and need to use PPT or keynote use the svg route but for everything else use gerberviewer.
Yes the SVG export option (From Export->SVG) is useful for doing the same. But it is an extra work of converting the SVGs to PDFs. Unlike SVG, PDF is a more widely supported file that supports vector content, that’s the one I mostly use and everybody can view it one their devices. I do not even have a good SVG viewer for my Windows 10 (I use Chrome and an SVG viewer extension).
Also, SVG files that contains “all layers in single file” do not respect the layer stack. Instead all shapes and layers get mixed which makes it impossible to work with. The “Plot to SVG” doesn’t support color.
Like you said, the best we can do is export SVGs for each layer and combine them with InkScape or Illustrator, and then convert them to PDF. But this can be done easily if we could choose the output color mode in PCBnew’s Plot->PDF just like we have in the Eescheema’s Plot->PDF.
I mainly use the colored vectors for assembly drawings, documentation and presentation.
It’s not always the case. Sometimes you have to send your designs or parts of them to someone who doesn’t have the EDA tool or a Gerber viewer installed. They could be on their mobile deviced also. If our intention is to let them see and edit the files properly, we could send the Gerbers or even the source files.
When you’re designing for products, it becomes crucial to share your designs with your team members who might be working with something else such as enclosure design.
Yes, before sending the STP or DXF files, they will usually want to see the changes we made - for example through a chat application. And there can be a chain of people to whom you want to convince what you have done! In such cases PDF is the best file format suited.
I can see that multi color output would be beneficial in some cases, but for multi layer boards it is also very near to useless because without the transparency, and ability to turn layers on/off It just gets too crowded too quickly to be useful for most people, so I’d guess a feature request like this would have very low priority.
If you want to make some small cutouts of details, then I’d guess that screenshots directly from Pcbnew should be adequate.
I also want to suggest to get better tools to work with .svg files. These are pretty much standard and can be viewed in any decent web browser. Here is an example:
You could take a gerber output and run it through a tool like tracespace (https://tracespace.io), which will generate a full color SVG image of the gerber as it would be fabbed, in addition to individual layers (black and white like Kicad would export). In theory you could then convert this into a PDF (Ai or Inkscape) and retain the vector image.
In such cases PDF is the best file format suited.