Hi there,
I've just acquired a rather nice EverPrecision 2002H PCB plotter, and
I'm trying to get Eagle to output the correct form of Gerber files that
the plotter understands.
I think it's the aperture file that's causing problems....
- If I use the supplied example gerber top file, and the supplied
example aperture file, the machine plots out the example circuit just
fine and dandy (well, duh! 
- If I use the eagle-generated aperture file (*.whl) and the
eagle-generated gerber top-layer file, I get a black screen in the
control-software. No lines anywhere
- If I use the eagle-generated gerber top-layer file and the supplied
example aperture file, I at least see something. It's a bit weird, but
there are lines on the screen.
I conclude that (at least) the aperture file is not being read
correctly. Inspecting the two files (the example one, and the
eagle-generated one) shows quite a different file format... Here's the
example one:
simon% cat Demo.apt
D11 ROUNDED 12.000 12.000 0.000 MULTI
D12 ROUNDED 50.000 50.000 0.000 MULTI
D13 ROUNDED 60.000 60.000 0.000 MULTI
D14 ROUNDED 48.000 48.000 0.000 MULTI
D15 RECTANGULAR 24.000 100.000 0.000 MULTI
D16 RELIEF 20.000 20.000 0.000 FLASH
D17 ROUNDED 20.000 20.000 0.000 MULTI
D18 RECTANGULAR 34.000 110.000 0.000 MULTI
D19 RECTANGULAR 100.000 24.000 0.000 MULTI
D20 RECTANGULAR 110.000 34.000 0.000 MULTI
D21 OVAL 24.000 100.000 0.000 MULTI
D22 OVAL 34.000 110.000 0.000 MULTI
D23 ROUNDED 6.000 6.000 0.000 MULTI
D24 ROUNDED 10.000 10.000 0.000 MULTI
D25 RELIEF 52.000 52.000 0.000 FLASH
D26 ROUNDED 52.000 52.000 0.000 MULTI
D27 RECTANGULAR 50.000 50.000 0.000 MULTI
D28 RECTANGULAR 60.000 60.000 0.000 MULTI
D29 ROUNDED 5.000 5.000 0.000 MULTI
... and here's what Eagle outputs for my test-the-plotter circuit:
simon% cat digi.whl
;aperture wheel file generated by EAGLE
;remove the above line to prevent this file from being overwritten!
D10 draw 0.0000inch
D11 draw 0.0030inch
D12 round 0.0560inch
D13 round 0.0620inch
D14 draw 0.0050inch
D15 draw 0.0020inch
D16 square 0.0560inch
D17 square 0.0620inch
D18 octagon 0.0560inch
D19 octagon 0.0620inch
D20 draw 0.0060inch
D21 draw 0.0040inch
D22 draw 0.0480inch
D23 draw 0.0540inch
D24 draw 0.0560inch
D25 draw 0.0620inch
D26 round 0.1360inch
D27 rectangle 0.0350inch x 0.0500inch
D28 draw 0.0632inch
D29 draw 0.0692inch
D30 draw 0.0100inch
D31 rectangle 0.7300inch x 0.0300inch
D32 rectangle 1.2200inch x 0.0200inch
D33 round 0.2000inch
D34 round 0.2060inch
D35 rectangle 0.0320inch x 0.2850inch
D36 rectangle 0.0320inch x 0.1850inch
D37 octagon 0.0480inch
D38 octagon 0.0540inch
D39 rectangle 0.0240inch x 0.0340inch
D40 rectangle 0.0200inch x 0.0150inch
D41 rectangle 0.0150inch x 0.0200inch
D42 draw 0.0700inch
D43 draw 0.0760inch
D44 square 0.0593inch
D45 square 0.0653inch
D46 round 0.0593inch
D47 round 0.0653inch
D48 round 0.0240inch
D49 round 0.0300inch
... the file-formats are quite clearly different, and presumably the
machine's software isn't sufficiently flexible to parse the output
correctly. I think the machine is expecting 'protel' aperture-file
syntax.
So:
- Is there any way of altering the format of the wheel file generated
by eagle ?
- Is there any place I can read up on how I might run a perl script to
convert between the two formats ?
- Is there an easier way ? Or am I just missing something ? This is the
first time I've played with Gerber output...
Thanks for any help
Simon
