I’m having a weird one! I’m on Arch and using KiCad 7.08-1 off the AUR. I can’t seem to get it to plot an edge cut geometry correctly. I have this issue whether the edge cut geometry is either an imported graphic or is directly drawn onto the edge cuts layer with KiCad tools.
The project will appear correctly in the 3D viewer and the gerbers will view correctly in the gerber viewer application within KiCad however the gm1 edge cuts gerber file doesn’t contain any co-ordinates. If I then upload the gerbers to JLCPCB or OSHPARK the edge cut geometry is not detected and fails. Weirdly if I upload the PCB project file to OSHPARK the edge cut geometry is detected.
I’ve reinstalled KiCad a few times etc… dunno what to try next!
I tried to load your project in Ucamco’s reference viewer (Ucamco is the owner and maintainer of the Gerber format) but the site won’t load for me. I don’t know if it’s on their side, or something like an overzealous ad (script) blocker on my side.
Gerbv does complain a bit, but I guess it is about things not supported in the newer X2 format.
Unknown RS-274X extension found %TF% at line 1 in file "/home/paul/downloads/flex_antenna/gerbers_zip/flex_antenna-Edge_Cuts.gm1"
Unknown RS-274X extension found %TF% at line 2 in file "/home/paul/downloads/flex_antenna/gerbers_zip/flex_antenna-Edge_Cuts.gm1"
Unknown RS-274X extension found %TF% at line 3 in file "/home/paul/downloads/flex_antenna/gerbers_zip/flex_antenna-Edge_Cuts.gm1"
Unknown RS-274X extension found %TF% at line 4 in file "/home/paul/downloads/flex_antenna/gerbers_zip/flex_antenna-Edge_Cuts.gm1"
Unknown RS-274X extension found %TF% at line 5 in file "/home/paul/downloads/flex_antenna/gerbers_zip/flex_antenna-Edge_Cuts.gm1"
Unknown RS-274X extension found %TA% at line 13 in file "/home/paul/downloads/flex_antenna/gerbers_zip/flex_antenna-Edge_Cuts.gm1"
Unknown RS-274X extension found %TD% at line 15 in file "/home/paul/downloads/flex_antenna/gerbers_zip/flex_antenna-Edge_Cuts.gm1"
Some other remarks:
You have a left over lock file in your project: “~flex_antenna.kicad_pcb.lck” This happens when KiCad crashes without a normal exit and you can delete this file. KiCad also deletes these files after an “Open Anyway” and a clean exit. This suggests “something” happened shortly before you uploaded those files.
paul@cezanne:~/downloads/flex_antenna$ ls -hl
total 3,3M
drwxr-xr-x 2 paul paul 4,0K Oct 30 14:07 flex_antenna-backups
-rw-r--r-- 1 paul paul 39K Oct 30 13:48 flex_antenna.kicad_pcb
-rw-r--r-- 1 paul paul 56 Oct 30 13:50 '~flex_antenna.kicad_pcb.lck'
-rw-r--r-- 1 paul paul 1,2K Oct 30 13:48 flex_antenna.kicad_prl
-rw-r--r-- 1 paul paul 6,8K Oct 30 12:46 flex_antenna.kicad_pro
-rw-r--r-- 1 paul paul 105 Oct 30 11:48 flex_antenna.kicad_sch
-rw------- 1 paul paul 3,2M Oct 30 13:48 fp-info-cache
drwxr-xr-x 2 paul paul 4,0K Oct 30 14:07 gerbers
-rw-r--r-- 1 paul paul 15K Oct 30 13:52 gerbers.zip
You have used the "Protel filename extensions**. This is not needed (and deprecated) for the X2 format.
Thanks for checking it out. I’ll delete the lock file. I took the settings for the gerber plotting output off the JLCPCB KiCad 7 gerber plotting guide where it has both those 2 settings ticked. I’ll query that with them.
Here is a screen shot of JLCPCB My Files with two versions of the project. The g3 version omits drill files. The g2 version does not. That’s the only difference (and there are no drill holes!)
WELL DANG! How annoying… removing the empty drill file makes it look right! What a bonkers day… about 5 minutes to make this silly experimental project antenna and then about 4 hours frustration trying to work out what I was doing wrong to make it render incorrectly! Many thanks all.
And here is a version with drill files, that has a hole!
So either JLCPCB’s system can’t deal correctly with drill files having no holes, or KiCad isn’t generating holeless drill files correctly (I don’t know enough to be able to tell if they’re OK or not).
