Hi there,
I've just acquired a rather nice EverPrecision 2002H PCB plotter, and I'm trying to get Eagle to output the correct form of Gerber files that the plotter understands.
I *think* it's the aperture file that's causing problems....
- If I use the supplied example gerber top file, and the supplied example aperture file, the machine plots out the example circuit just fine and dandy (well, duh! :)
- If I use the eagle-generated aperture file (*.whl) and the eagle-generated gerber top-layer file, I get a black screen in the control-software. No lines anywhere
- If I use the eagle-generated gerber top-layer file and the supplied example aperture file, I at least see something. It's a bit weird, but there are lines on the screen.
I conclude that (at least) the aperture file is not being read correctly. Inspecting the two files (the example one, and the eagle-generated one) shows quite a different file format... Here's the example one:
simon% cat Demo.apt D11 ROUNDED 12.000 12.000 0.000 MULTI D12 ROUNDED 50.000 50.000 0.000 MULTI D13 ROUNDED 60.000 60.000 0.000 MULTI D14 ROUNDED 48.000 48.000 0.000 MULTI D15 RECTANGULAR 24.000 100.000 0.000 MULTI D16 RELIEF 20.000 20.000 0.000 FLASH D17 ROUNDED 20.000 20.000 0.000 MULTI D18 RECTANGULAR 34.000 110.000 0.000 MULTI D19 RECTANGULAR 100.000 24.000 0.000 MULTI D20 RECTANGULAR 110.000 34.000 0.000 MULTI D21 OVAL 24.000 100.000 0.000 MULTI D22 OVAL 34.000 110.000 0.000 MULTI D23 ROUNDED 6.000 6.000 0.000 MULTI D24 ROUNDED 10.000 10.000 0.000 MULTI D25 RELIEF 52.000 52.000 0.000 FLASH D26 ROUNDED 52.000 52.000 0.000 MULTI D27 RECTANGULAR 50.000 50.000 0.000 MULTI D28 RECTANGULAR 60.000 60.000 0.000 MULTI D29 ROUNDED 5.000 5.000 0.000 MULTI
... and here's what Eagle outputs for my test-the-plotter circuit:
simon% cat digi.whl
;aperture wheel file generated by EAGLE ;remove the above line to prevent this file from being overwritten!
D10 draw 0.0000inch D11 draw 0.0030inch D12 round 0.0560inch D13 round 0.0620inch D14 draw 0.0050inch D15 draw 0.0020inch D16 square 0.0560inch D17 square 0.0620inch D18 octagon 0.0560inch D19 octagon 0.0620inch D20 draw 0.0060inch D21 draw 0.0040inch D22 draw 0.0480inch D23 draw 0.0540inch D24 draw 0.0560inch D25 draw 0.0620inch D26 round 0.1360inch D27 rectangle 0.0350inch x 0.0500inch D28 draw 0.0632inch D29 draw 0.0692inch D30 draw 0.0100inch D31 rectangle 0.7300inch x 0.0300inch D32 rectangle 1.2200inch x 0.0200inch D33 round 0.2000inch D34 round 0.2060inch D35 rectangle 0.0320inch x 0.2850inch D36 rectangle 0.0320inch x 0.1850inch D37 octagon 0.0480inch D38 octagon 0.0540inch D39 rectangle 0.0240inch x 0.0340inch D40 rectangle 0.0200inch x 0.0150inch D41 rectangle 0.0150inch x 0.0200inch D42 draw 0.0700inch D43 draw 0.0760inch D44 square 0.0593inch D45 square 0.0653inch D46 round 0.0593inch D47 round 0.0653inch D48 round 0.0240inch D49 round 0.0300inch
... the file-formats are quite clearly different, and presumably the machine's software isn't sufficiently flexible to parse the output correctly. I *think* the machine is expecting 'protel' aperture-file syntax.
So: - Is there any way of altering the format of the wheel file generated by eagle ? - Is there any place I can read up on how I might run a perl script to convert between the two formats ? - Is there an easier way ? Or am I just missing something ? This is the first time I've played with Gerber output...
Thanks for any help
Simon