1. Home
  2. Electronics Design
  3. PCB Design Using Vector Art

PCB Design Using Vector Art

I have a circuit design that contains about 12 standard components, and need to produce a few dozen, single-sided PCB's.

However, it involves etching a special (large) antenna design that can only be produced as vector art.

Rather than try to combine this with a Gerber file, I thought of doing the whole circuit as vector art. I believe some manufacturers can still work from black and white print copy.

The final result would be something like the photo resist art for DIY projects published in various hobby magazines. I am happy to do the drilling by hand.

The question is, what software, or combination thereof, would best suit this purpose?

Hopefully, something more dedicated to EDA than a generic vector package like Corel or Illustrator where I would need to individually create pads and tracks.

Len Stuart

Reply to
Len Stuart
Loading thread data ...

Why can it only be produced as vector art? I don't know which PCB package you are using but many packages allow importing of bitmap images (sometimes using third party tools).

I wouldn't go that route. For packages with many pins a slight error will make the PCB hard to assemble.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

"Len Stuart" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@news.tpg.com.au...

How large is large? What's so special about the antenna design that it cannot be made up by copper traces from the PCB-design package? I don't know EDA but it doesn't seem to be a big problem using EAGLE for instance.

petrus bitbyter

Reply to
petrus bitbyter

All you need to do is create properly feducialed (feducialized?) image sets which are all to scale.

A simple, modern PC printer has the fine registration resolution needed for clean artwork.

No tape up needed.

So, you decide your feducials, component placements AND drill holes first, and make sure that template underlies any layers you intend to match up.

There are PCB makers which will still make a PCB from photo artworks.

You can even find a photo shop somewhere that will take precisely scaled photo negatives (or positives) from you print outs and they WILL be precise and properly registered.

One could not do that back before printers could be relied on for registration integrity from print to print.

Reply to
SoothSayer

yeh, use a pcb tool to do everything and import the antenna part, that also takes care of getting solder mask, drill files, stencils etc. right. Even Eagle can import something like dxf

-Lasse

Reply to
langwadt

POSTSCRIPT is vector and has "built-in" fonts for labeling; color control for layers, etc. Furthermore if one was rather enterprising, one could write a program to create the gerbers.

Corel does work with vectors but is a bit awkward to use to make a line from point X to point Y - and i seriously doubt that there any Gerber converters.

Both are quite useable to create artwork to be printed for film / masks. Corel can output to PostScript (export to EPS) as well as import from PostScript, so one can combine best attributes of both. You may have to keep an eye on linewidth in PostScript so that the stroke command does a proper rendering.

Reply to
Robert Baer

Be advised that the US Government has nothing to do with "feducials"; it is spelled "fiducials".

Reply to
Robert Baer

What is the short term for the tongue making the fart sound?

Reply to
SoothSayer

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.