In SX Microcontrollers, SX/B Compiler and SX-Key Tool, Coriolis wrote:

ExpressPCB is the service Jon touts, they have thier own design software you must use to submit designs, they are geared towards the less experienced designers. PCBExpress is a standard fab house that only accepts gerbers.

Yes if you don't know what you are doing with gerbers you can end up with glorified coasters. But you can mitigate the likelyhood of that happening by going with a reputable fab house that explicitly states they will have a real person check over your designs.

My first gerber fab was through Advanced Circuits, and they have two levels of scrutiny, the first was an automated engine that looked through your design and looked for DRC errors, you could not submit the design until it passed, but if you did proper DRC in your layout software you should be able to pass with no problems. The second level after submission a person sat down and thouroughly looked through my design, he emailed me asking what I wanted to do with the location crosshairs for the silkscreen text, Eagle defaults these to 0 width (which I have yet to figure out how to change) which shows up as a warning (since silkscreen is a non critical feature). I replied that I didn't want them and he erased them from the gerber for me. He also slightly shifted the location of some of the silk screen labels that were over exposed copper (Eagle isn't as precise with silkscreen as with copper), and the silkscreens that couldn't be moved he did a masking of so they didn't print over the exposed copper. The only error in the entire board was that a retention hole for a switch was not drilled, no biggie I just filed down the post on the switch, the solder still held it in place. I later went back to my design and discoved it was my fault because I didn't include the hole layer in with the drill layer when I generated the excellon drill file.

I strongly suggest doing the same when you decide to go the gerber route, having an experienced professional look over your designs can save you alot of time and money. Then once you feel like you have the knack for generating gerbers, goto cheaper houses that dont provide the same level of service.

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