Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/03/23/02:36:44
On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, DJ Delorie wrote:
>
>> I have now 'upgraded' to gEDA PCB for my layout work and find it quite
>> convenient with a few exceptions. For one, there is no HPGL output, which
>> means I cannot do my PCB fabrication using the plotter.
>>
>> Is there any way to get HPGL from a raster file such as PS?
>
> PCB's internals are not raster; what you want is to write an exporter
> HID for pcb that exports the internal data files directly to your
> plotter. I don't think such a beast exists, although the ps
> (Postscript) exporter is probably close to what you want.
>
> As for "why hasn't it been done yet"... because nobody who wanted it
> done has taken the time to do it yet ;-)
I have an old IBM pen plotter that speaks HPGL. When I was playing around
with pcb-gpmi [1], one of my examples was a minimalistic HPGL exporter
written in awk [2]. It was not a proper HPGL exporter, just a quick hack
in 81 lines of script: it didn't do much, only plotted the wireframe of
lines - no arcs, polys or vias. It was more about trying awk embedded in
PCB than about really plotting my PCBs.
However, it demonstrates that such an exporter is possible and shouldn't
be too hard, especially when done from scripts. Depending on what exactly
should be plotted (e.g. polys filled with horizontal lines?), such an
exporter should be doable properly in a few days or at most weeks.
Althought the source is still available, pcb-gpmi has bitrotten since. I
still have plans to merge it in my new fork (pcb-rnd) but I am not aware
of any effort for allowing such embedded scripts in mainline PCB. Of
course a HGPL exporter is easily possible in C too, just takes a few
lines of code more.
Regards,
Igor2
[1] http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-gpmi/
[2] http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-gpmi/plugins/export_hpgl.awk
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