EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff => Topic started by: sacherjj on March 17, 2012, 10:06:30 pm
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If there an easy way to convert images of various PCB layers into files needed to order them.
I'm asking, because the I2C Bus book that Dave showed in the Mailbag episode arrived. I decided to build most of the projects. However, $100 for boards is ridiculous. For the same amount, I could get 10 of each board. If I can convert the PDF they provide into orderable files.
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Not that I'm aware of. You could etch them yourself if they're single layer. I believe some PCB manufacturers accept image files instead of Gerbers for an extra fee (no idea how close this it to $100 ;)). Most PCB design packages will allow you to import an image as background, so you can trace it. Not sure if your time is cheap enough to warrant the labor, though.
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Just a pure guess but I suspect that you will not be able to. PDF's are basically a picture format and Gerbers a text based format
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I would probably start off by vectorizing the image and saving it into SVG. This is basically a text format, so I could later on write a script that would convert the svg to gerber .... the Gerber is a very simple format.
I just tried to vectorize a pcb gif I had around and the SVG file was relatively close to the image.. I used an evaluation vector of TotalVectorize but looking in the SVG to see how hard would be to write a script for conversion to Gerber, I saw a comment there saying "Created by Potrace Professional 1.0c" so apparently they licensed the open source package protrace that's available here:
http://potrace.sourceforge.net/ (http://potrace.sourceforge.net/)
If you have pdf files, you can basically export the images from it, they should be inside at least at 100 dpi, should be good enough for 0.5mm pads, give or take a few mils.
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Thanks all, that is about what I thought. I wish Elektor would charge reasonable fees for these, so this wasn't necessary.