Gerber Parser?

[741]

Anyone know of either free Gerber manipulation software or a Gerber parser (C or Delphi/Lazarus)? It was a slow, painful process to create a panelised from multiple designs in KiCad.

I looked into gerbmerge, but it looks a bit painful; hardly intuitive or easy to use.

Also, out of interest, how easy would simple translate / rotate 90 degree operations be to implement on a Gerber dataset?

(I've got a copy of the file format, and it seems well set out, but also very long. I've onlly read a tiny fraction of it).

[ElektroQuark]

Try this tool. It may help.

[741]

Hey, that looks more like it! Thanks.

[Mattylad]

Why do you want to panelise the same Gerbers?

The fab house are only going to rip them all off bar 1 cct, do their front end work on it (etch compensation etc.) then repanelise it all.
Your effectively wasting your time, time that could be better put doing a good panel drawing that tells them what to do, which is something they can do in seconds with their front end software.

[741]

Hi Matt

No, I panelised different 'Gerbers'! (In fact: I created several designs for IC adapters in KiCad, then I used File: "Append Board", finally I manually added tabs).

So, strictly I was working directly with design files.

However, it would be nice to be able to user Gerbers diectly, and to have some help with the layout from a dedicated tool.

Regards
Stephen

[Warhawk]

@Edo: This looks great ! I wish I had this some time ago.

@741: Do Itead really charge extra when you have multiple designs on the pre-paid board or they don't care?

[741]

No extra charge 

I checked with them first "is this OK", and they said basically "send us your files to check". It was OK, no problems.

I used 2mm router slots.

Main other thing is you ensure nothing can fall off and damage their equipment, result must be mechanically rigid.