Image To Gerber Converter

[jordileft]

Hi everyone,

I've developed a software for converting images to gerber files, it works great for me so I thought it could be useful for other people.

You can download it for free but it's been many hours of work, so if it's useful for you any contribution would be really appreciated.

https://imagetogerber.wordpress.com/



Best regards,

[BravoV]

Interesting reverse engineer tool, downloading ... thanks ! 

[krivx]

Is it possible to edit the layers as images, before they are converted to gerbers? In the example shown the silkscreen text is "cutting" into a copper layer, it would be nice to correct that in something like Photoshop.

[jordileft]

Of course, you edit your image with Paint, Photoshop or anything similar, save your changes and then load the new image with the app.

[doctormord]

Interesting, how does it works for the drills?

[jordileft]

Interesting, how does it works for the drills?

The result for any desired objects of the circuits always depends on its color. If drills have a different color than any other object in the pcb then its perfect, 'cause you can get a direct output, if there are some other objects with the same color you have two options, edit the image prior to using the app or use a gerber editor if you can get one to edit the resulting gerber.

[IconicPCB]

Jordie,
Thanks.

I am having some problems

invoking java -jar ImageToGerber.jar results in a bunch of errors

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: imagetogerber/myJFrame : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:800)
   at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:449)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:71)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:361)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355)
   at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:425)
   at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:358)
   at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.checkAndLoadMain(LauncherHelper.java:482)

invoking java -version offers

java version "1.7.0_95"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea 2.6.4) (7u95-2.6.4-0ubuntu0.14.04.1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.95-b01, mixed mode)

Any hints on how to get it going?

[jordileft]

I think that you need java 1.8 for running it. Try that and let me know!

[IconicPCB]

Works on 1.8
Will put it through it's paces .

[IconicPCB]

Jordie,

An interesting tool.

Have You considered providing a colour pallet rather than colour ( RGB) value input)? This would be less flexible but it would eliminate the ( unnecessary? ) keyboard interaction.

I see that You are using a polygon tool to define the layer content when converting to Gerber. Is there a way to define a small round tool to actually draw the Gerber layer ( as opposed to polygon ). It may be easier to edit the Gerbers when drawn this way. It may also be easier to convert draws to flashes rather than converting parts of a polygon to flashes.

[jordileft]

Thanks for your feedback!

I don't think a colour pallet would be a good choice, if some day I improve the current version probably I would add a color "picker", this way you have the same precission while supressing user input.

Initially, this application defined objects as draws as you suggest, the problem is that the resulting gerbers most of the time were really heavy. As many gerber editors have a tool for converting from polygon to draws or flashes I prefer to define everything as a polygon so the application resulting files are as simple and light as possible.

[dellsam34]

Is this app still free to try?

[jordileft]

Yes, it is.  You've got a free limited version  without scaling feature and then you have ImageToGerberFull   and ImageToPcb , this last version allows you to export both gerber & drill files too.

I know that free software is really cool but there are many hours of work behind that, so if you decide to support getting ImageToGerberFull or ImageToPcb it will be really appreciated. 

[PeteDD]

Neat tool but free version is creating improperly scaled files.  10.00 inch wide png is producing a 118.228 inch wide gerber file.  What to do about this?  My png is 300 pixels per inch.

[jordileft]

Hey Pete,

Gerber format used to have an scale factor command which allowed gerber scaling by adding one line in the header, but that command is deprecated since December 2012 gerber format revision, so I guess some software will be able to interpret that command and some won't.

If yo don't need to export drill files you can always purchase the full version of ImageToGerber, it is not that expensive and your contribution would be really appreciated.

[Just_another_Dave]

Jordie,

An interesting tool.

Have You considered providing a colour pallet rather than colour ( RGB) value input)? This would be less flexible but it would eliminate the ( unnecessary? ) keyboard interaction.

I see that You are using a polygon tool to define the layer content when converting to Gerber. Is there a way to define a small round tool to actually draw the Gerber layer ( as opposed to polygon ). It may be easier to edit the Gerbers when drawn this way. It may also be easier to convert draws to flashes rather than converting parts of a polygon to flashes.

A color picker would be also really useful, as it would allow choosing the adequate colors just by clicking on the different parts of the image

[jordileft]

There's a color picker already implemented, just click on the WhatsThisColor button.