Solidworks Pcb Open Gerber Files

Importing Gerber/DXF from PCB into SolidWorks

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Solidworks Pcb Open Gerber Files Folders

PCB design in Gerber files are made of various layers of components, copper, traces, etc.; these layers can be separately viewed with these Gerber viewer software. You can zoom, rotate, flip, and move the designs for enhanced view. Some of these software also let you view top and bottom view of PCB design layers.
Jan 19, 2018 The files have now been converted to the corresponding SOLIDWORKS PCB file format with all references intact. To learn more about SOLIDWORKS PCB. Visit our SOLIDWORKS PCB product page, check out our other PCB blog articles, follow us on YouTube or give us a call at 1-877-219-6757 to speak with an electrical expert.

SOLIDWORKS PCB proudly supports most Altium documents. All documents contain the same file extension, while the PCB document requires a very short import pro. SOLIDWORKS designers who need to make masks for PCB or for integrated circuits can use STL2GBR which translates STL files to Gerber and STL2GDS which translates STL to GDSII. Artwork also supplies a tool to import Gerber, ODB, or GDSII. What are PCB Gerber Files. A Gerber file is basically an image of a PCB. It showcases each individual layer as it appears throughout your circuit design. Gerber files represent copper layers images, solder mask, legend, and drill and route data helping to simplify the process of seeing how the circuit board should be fabricated.

As the design of PCB's becomes more complex, the need to do 3D modeling of a printed circuit board also becomes more important. Many PCB design tools have an interface to SolidWorks via the IDF file format -- however this approach is useful mostly for components, connectors, board outline and mounting holes. If you need conductor and plated through hole data in 3D, IDF is not a good solution. And, of course, if your PCB layout tool does not support IDF you are out of luck.

AutoCAD DXF?

An initial thought is to use SolidWorks ability to import AutoCAD's DWG/DXF format as a way to move the board data into SolidWorks. For example, it is pretty easy to convert most Gerber files into DXF. However those that have tried this have found it does not work as well as one would hope.

Issues?

Polylines with width not supported - SolidWorks doesn't read the width of the polyline (this may have changed in recent versions of SW) so if you are using polylines with width in AutoCAD to represent traces you lose them.

Layers not Supported - most PCBs have multiple layers and you want the conductors on each layer to stay on the layer. If you try to import multiple layers into solidworks you'll find that they all get mushed together.

Manual Extrusions - You'll have to manually select the lines/arcs and extrude them to get a 'part' in Solidworks. While this is not a problem for a few pieces, a large PCB makes this quite aggravating.

No Z Data - assuming you have a 'stack' of conductor and dielectric layers, you have to import them one at time and then assemble them. Again, very time consuming.

Material Properties - it would be nice if you could pass the fact that your conductors are copper and that your board is FR4 (or alumina or whatever material) but these attributes have to be attached manually.

Examples of DXF into SolidWorks

It might be worthwhile to actually demonstrate some of these issues mentioned above. We are going to run two experiments: Gerber to DXF using a standard converter and Gerber to DXF using Artworks GBRUNION. What is the difference?

GBR2DXF

GBRUNion

Here is the set of Gerber Files we are going to use for our demo

The red layer is the top.gbr, the green layer is the bottom.gbr, the blue layer is an inner power/ground (drawn in reverse as is typical for such layers) and the yellow layer represents the drill data which runs all the way through the board. A magenta layer is hardly visible but contains the board outline. You can download the set of Gerber files as solidworks_gerber.zip

In this Gerber tutorial, I will teach you how to create the files you need for a 2-layer board using Cadsoft Eagle. After you have completed this tutorial you will have all the necessary files needed to send to most PCB manufacturers.

This tutorial is out of date. I have switched to KiCad, so I recommend the updated tutorial How to Create Gerber Files in KiCad.

Step 1: Open the CAM Processor

In Eagle, open Board view. Click the “CAM” button or choose “File->CAM Processor”. This will open the CAM Processor tool that is used to generate the files.

Here you can define the sections you want to create files for.

But you don’t really need to understand this. Actually I have never really thought about the details of this until I was writing this article. I have just been using ready-made configurations. And that is probably what you want to do as well.

Step 2: Open a predefined job

To simplify creating Gerber files, Eagle comes with a predefined job for this. It is called gerb274x.cam.

(Note: If you want to order PCBs from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service, you should instead download their own CAM-file from the bottom of their submission guidelines page. Be aware that this will give you different file names than the ones listed below in this article.)

To open it in the CAM Processor click “File->Open->Job…”

Browse to your …/eagle/cam/ folder, and you should see a file called gerb274x.cam. Choose it and click “Open”.

You will now see five tabs in the CAM Processor. Each of these tabs will generate a Gerber file.

Step 3: Adding a second silk screen (Optional)

If you look at the tabs, you will see that you don’t have a file for silk screen bottom. For simple boards, the silk screen is usually on the top layer so that you don’t need the bottom. Some of the cheap circuit board manufacturers don’t even allow bottom silk screen.

But if you need silk screen on bottom layer as well, follow these steps:

Click “Add”
Change Section to something like “Silk Screen SOL”
Change File to “%N.pls”
Deselect all layers
Select layers 20 “Dimension”, 22 “bPlace” and 26 “bNames”

There you go.

Step 4: Create each gerber file

Select where you want to put the Gerber files by clicking on the “File” button and choosing a folder. Do this for all the tabs.

Then click “Process Job”. This creates your Gerber files.

Step 5: Adding file for drill holes

Even though drilling is supported by the Gerber format, manufacturers usually want the Excellon file format for specifying drill holes. Luckily, Eagle also comes with a predefined job for creating a drill file.

Solidworks pcb open gerber files folders

(Note: This step is automatically done if you’re using the CAM-file from Seeed Studio that I linked to in step 2.)

Open it in the CAM Processor by clicking “File->Open->Job…”

Browse to your …/eagle/cam/ folder, and open the file named “excellon.cam”.

Select where to put the output file by clicking on the “File” button.

Then click “Process Job” to create your Excellon file.

Step 6: Check output files

You should now have the following files:

*.cmp (Copper, component side)
*.drd (Drill file)
*.dri (Drill Station Info File) – Usually not needed
*.gpi (Photoplotter Info File) – Usually not needed
*.plc (Silk screen, component side)
*.pls (Silk screen, solder side)
*.sol (Copper, solder side)
*.stc (Solder stop mask, component side)
*.sts (Solder stop mask, solder side)

After you have created each gerber file, you should always look at them using a Gerber viewer to make sure everything is ok.

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Summary

This Gerber tutorial shows one way of creating the files you need. Even though this should be OK for many PCB manufacturers, you might find that some would want the files created in a slightly different way. If so, don’t worry, they will probably provide you with a Job file you can load directly into Eagle or at least have a good explanation on how to do it on their website.

Solidworks Pcb Open Gerber Files Folders

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