On Jul 15, 2010, at 12:40 PM, Mark Rages wrote: > Hi all, > > Having reached the limits of pcb's feeble editor, I want to take some > traces on a pcb through a pcb->???->dxf->qcad->dxf->dxftopcb->pcb > cycle. > > I had already written the dxftopcb tool. > (http://vivara.net/software/dxftopcb) when I discovered dxf2pcb > (http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Sep-2009/msg00134.html). > > So before I start on the pcbtodxf tool, has anybody done this already?
Done, no. Thought about, yes. But my application is a little different. I want to get a DXF file that I can run through a CAM package, in particular the paste layer, which isn't a 'real' layer, unfortunately -- it is synthesized in the output HID as I understand it. And while preserving dimensions is useful in some situations, I also want to be able to do rule-based adjustments of dimensions. And I also want to be able to deal with a pcb design from any tool. Anyway, my last thoughts were that pcb is the wrong place to do what I want to do. The correct place is a gerber2dxf conversion tool. The new gerbv is librarized, so one could write a front-end to libgerbv that read gerbers via libgerbv and then did the massage and output function. You might checkout the gerbv library API, and consider if maybe that is a better place to accomplish your job. -dave PS. Another application is simply creating a component for a 3D mechanical CAD package. For that, exporting an outline layer and the drills as a .dxf would be sufficient for making a component that could be slurped into SolidWorks or FreeCAD or such. Again, probably a nice application of libgerbv. _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user