X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Message-ID: <55B6674B.9080108@buffalo.edu> Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2015 13:15:55 -0400 From: Stephen Besch User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.8.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Subject: [geda-user] bug? in Gerber Export in PCB Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-PM-EL-Spam-Prob: : 8% Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com That last - incomplete- message was sent by some glitch in Thunderbird. It decided I was taking too long and sent it on my behalf - without permission I may add! For some time now I have struggled with the rather inscrutable and somewhat arcane User interface for Gerber exports from PCB. While nothing has changed recently (currently using latest git-HEAD), more oddities have turned up. Specifically, there are three issues. The first is simply figuring out how to specify the base directory for the gerber files. It is almost completely inscrutable, but patience and about a half hour of trial and error resolves it. This bit of the GUI really needs a standard Folder Chooser. The second issue is the weirdness of the the output file names. Standard layers (Top, bottom, etc) come out named after their respective layers. However all the other layers - specifically "Spare" in the current case, come out named something like Group3.gbr - and it matters not how you might rename them. I did discover this morning however that choosing the "single" option in the export panel does indeed at least give rational names which match the given layer names. The third issue is more serious and irritating. If I draw some stuff on the "Spare" layer and then generate the gerbers, the spare layer contains a large amount of stuff from other layers - pads and pins mostly - that are neither supposed to be there nor do they show up in PCB's display - only in the gerber viewer. These all have to be manually deleted usidg Gerbv. While these are not show-stoppers, the random junk in the spare layer could be a rather painful problem if one was foolish enough to send a board off without previewing the gerbers.