It has become apparent that, despite all of the presumably authoritative talk, nobody engaged in discussion about AD and octagonal pads has actually taken a look to see whether or not the issue has been resolved.
I couldn't possibly care less about octagonal pads; however, I took a few minutes to run exactly the same test on them that I ran on the new rounded corner pads. For the record, it appears that octagonal pads are presented and processed properly by AD6.6. I converted the pads to octagonal on the same test layout I used for rounded corner pads (various angles of rotation, top and bottom layer surface pads, and thru-hole pads). I produced two sets of Gerber files from that layout - one mirrored and one not. I then read those Gerbers using four different CAM tools - CAMTASTIC, CAM350, Pentalogix Viewmaster, and Gerbtool. All CAM tools read the Gerbers the same way, and all renderings of the octagonal pads were correct. There were no rotational or dimensional distortions on any rendering of the pads by the CAM tools available to me. It appears that, like many other REALLY OLD problems, this one has been fixed. Note that this does NOT mean that there isn't a CAM program out there somewhere that will improperly process the octagonal apertures - I don't have access to every CAM program available. It does mean that apparently Altium has gotten it right for some of the more commonly used CAM programs. I can forward a set of Gerbers to anyone who needs to see for themselves. Instead of old 'whine' pressed from sour grapes, how about moving on to more recent vintage? Harry ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum To Post messages: mailto:[email protected] Unsubscribe and Other Options: http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
