On Tue, March 27, 2012 11:27 am, M.L. wrote: > On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:22 AM, John Gardner wrote: >> I'm new to the business of having PCBs made. >> >> Autotrax 1.61 -> CadCentric -> 274X Gerbers, which look OK >> in a Gerber viewer (http://www.gerber-viewer.com/default.aspx.) >> >> Has anyone else done this, or similar, or have a better scheme? >> > > > Autotrax is incredibly old, but if that's what you want to use it should > work. > > Anything will work as long as you verify that your resulting Gerber > files are correct. > > I would recommend Cadsoft Eagle or a free software program that I > can't remember at the moment. > > For viewing Gerber files I recommend "GerbV": > http://gerbv.sourceforge.net/ Honestly, I've found that looking at the Gerbers themselves haven't done anything for me in the last few designs I've done (including some rather large designs upwards of 6"x10", 4 layer). Maybe I trust in Eagle too much, but I think the only thing I could see in a Gerber is a rather gross error, and my experience has been that the Gerbers that Eagle (and with less experience, Altium) put out are accurate to the layout program. Proper application of design rules and listening to the warnings that the layout program gives me (don't forget online DRCs too- they have value!) have turned out to be much more effective uses of my time. If I were to switch to a program I had less experience with, maybe I'd run them through a Gerber viewer. But in the past 10 years, I don't remember a single time that reviewing a Gerber would have given me something that I couldn't have picked up in the layout program. Of course, the above comments are with Gerbers that are 100% generated by the layout program. Hand edit them, and all bets are off. I frequently get customers to ask me to review layouts, and gahh... I hate it when someone sends me just a Gerber, since the Gerber doesn't have any information about the net embedded- I feel like it is doing a code review of a .hex file. Sure, it can be done, but with a lot of effort, and my review is much more effective with the source files. Of course, a Gerber is better than nothing, but constructive comments on a complex design (with just Gerbers) are pretty difficult. Matt Bennett Just outside of Austin, TX 30.51,-97.91 The views I express are my own, not that of my employer, a large multinational corporation that you are familiar with. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .