Protel Design Explorer 99se and Gerber files.

I have a friend that is doing some artwork for me, and he is having a few problems.

Both of us haven't done a PCB design since last century. A couple of old work horses trying to design a new board.

Have outlined the problem as explained by him below:

any help appreciated, thanks.

Cheers Don...

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I am going to produce some PCBs and having never done gerber prints before, I created what I think are the correct files but when I view them with GERBER MAGIC there appears to be an extension to the size of my PCB of about 5mm all round..

I am using Protel Design Explorer 99se and in protel the PCB size is correct.

Is this normal when using gerber magic to view a PCB?.

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Don - why the need to view using gerber magic?

I've always done all the board work inside 99se and simply emailed the protel .pcb to the pcb manufacturer. I a few cases I've exported the gerber files & sent them off.

I've probably done over a 100 boards over the years without any issues (other than my own stuff ups!)

Years ago I did try using a gerber viewer (I cannot recall which one) and gave up because I could not get it to work.

Not sure this will help but its my experience.

Thanks for getting back Dennis,

The pcb manufacturer we are going to try: ourpcb.com seems to want only gerber files so we are trying to comply with this. We tried Gerber Magic to see what the output looks like, to give us an idea that we are heading in the right direction.

I'll pass your comments back to my Friend Mick, who is doing battle with the board.

As I say, neither of us has done a board since last century, (:-)) and Protel Design Explorer 99se is what we have at this point. I started off in the days of bishop graphics, then smartwork, and finally Autotrax for DOS, and Mick got to the stage of Protel Design Explorer 99se. Just a couple of dinosaurs, looking for answers.

Perhaps the board house will accept what we have in the way of Protel output. I'll give it a try.

Cheers Don...

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It's worth checking if they take the protel files. I and others here have used pcbcart.com in china. They take protel files & I was quite pleased with service, turn around time & price. Hope the boards work out well.

Yeh!

I'm sure you are correct Dennis, and if they don't I'll check out the mob you suggested.

Thanks for all of that, good result.

Cheers Don...

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-- Don McKenzie

Dontronics Blog:

New MMBasic Computer

These products will reduce in price by 5% every month:

Bare Proto PCB for PIC or AVR projects? "I'd buy that for a Dollar!".

I have used PCB cart a lot, no problems at all.

You could try GC-Preview a free geber viewer, works for me using Protel Client - 1 version before 99SE I think. I always supply PCBCart with gerbers. They do a good job of 'front end' checking too, picking up a few of my mistakes...

suggested.

Don, I still use AutoTrax (DOS) and I use/recommend pcbcart. They will take the Protel file as-is without requiring you to generate the Gerbers.

What I have done on a couple of occasions is ask them to return the layer "separations" for checking here before fab starts. This has ensured that everything is on the correct layer, and really verified that their separation/driver software is correctly interpreting our work. I would recommend thatyou ask for this same process as a check the first time you use a new fab or send a new file format .