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Excellon Drill File - M70

I am reviewing PCB Gerber files returned to me by the PCB fab house after their edits. I am not able to load the Excellon drill file oddly enough. It has an M70 code which GerbV flags as an error.

When I look up the M70 code I can't find a definition for it other than in the rather wordy command, "M02X#Y#M70" which is called Swap Axis. I do find M70 alone in many example files. I see it under "Inch Measuring Mode M72". So is M70 a synonym for M72? Excellon seems to indicate M70 is "format 1" while M72 is "format 2".

So how is M70 different from "INCH,LZ"? The example on the following Excellon page has an example drill file with both commands.

formatting link

If this is valid, why doesn't GerbV accept it?

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Rick
Reply to
rickman
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Wow, never heard of this command. I have the "Gerber format guide" published by Gerber Systems Corp in 1994, and I can't find any mention of the M70, they only list up to M65.

If it really is a swap axes command, you can just comment it out, and it should display it as you originally drew it. The swap axes might be for their own manufacturing convenience to fit the multi-up boards to their standard panels.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Why? My reply to: is the same as my from: (at least when I'm sending from home.) I had to do this crap to satisfy overly picky ISPs when traveling.

As for the G70, if you take it out, it OUGHT to render the drill file with whatever changes they made. You then talk about the silkscreen, that would be in the Gerber files, not the drill file.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

The two messages I replied to had "Choose, an, appropriate,..." in the "Followup to" field, as did this one. That generates many invalid newsgroup entries in my reply *each* of which have to be deleted before I can enter a valid newsgroup. How is that useful to anyone?

Uh, the command is "M70". Yes, I can figure out to remove this from the file, but then I am *not* verifying the file I was sent, am I?

The issue is the silk screen layers wrt the drill holes and via pads. So I need all five layers working properly so I can see how much overlap there is with the via holes and via pads.

I'm not asking anyone to rethink this issue for me. I'm asking if anyone has knowledge of this problem so I can know what to expect from a Gerber viewing program. The info on the Excellon drill file format is not as clear as I would like. How Format 1 and Format 2 are distinguished is not at all clear.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

The M70 is just an X,Y origin command. Take it out and move on with what you want to do.

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Reply to
TTman

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