Gerber Editor

[mke_et]

I have a couple of projects that have 'mistakes' in them. In both cases, the changes are incredibly minor, and rather than redo the project, I was hoping to be able to edit the gerbers directly.

Does anyone have any recomendations for software that they use and trust that would fit the bill?

Yeah, I'd like to get a complete creator and router package, but that's not realistic with the budget right now. So just a simple editor that would allow me to make simple 'cuts and jumps' to a design so that I don't have to make REAL 'cuts and jumps' with wirewrap when the boards come in.

If you could give me a rough idea of cost it would be appreciated.

Mike

[mke_et]

OK, I did in fact get the ViewMaster EZ for $50. It appears to be a variant of ViewMate only it allows saves.

I'm still trying to figure out how to do what I want with it. Before I could play with things and get it to 'look like' what I wanted it to, but now that it actually saves I'm finding I'm doing a lot of things wrong. I think it's me, I just don't know how to kill that fly with my M16 yet!

Anyway, it's not vaporware, it is a legitimate deal. It WILL be 'keyed' to a specific machine, only installable once. Unless you pay for thier hardware encryption key (a USB dongle) but for the price of that you could get 3 more copies.

Hey, for $50 it's one heck of a deal!

[mke_et]

I'm getting ViewMasterEZ ordered today. I'll let you know how it works once I play with it. But from what I've seen so far, it APPEARS to be pretty much a version of ViewMate with full capabilty to write. I started playing with ViewMate capabilities to see what it can do, but without the abilty to save after an edit...

The install of the ViewMasterEZ is 'tied' to one machine. Protected out the but. However, for $49...

Hey, I have two simple designs that I need to fix, and although one of them will cost $450 to retool for ANY cahanges, it will save time and resouces in construction for a change so simple it's ridiculous. The change is a bit more complex, just two cuts and one 'snake' trace, but it will save a LOT of time. Then I have a third board that actually is fine, except for the green mask over 2 vias that a part has to be soldered into... Overall, $49 is cheap!

Mike

[mke_et]

I went back to check out ViewMate, just to see how much...

Anyway, I mucked around on their web site, and they will sell me ViewMaster for $49!!

No autorouting, or other automated features, but it does allow me to rip up a trace and manually place new.

At least, I think so. I'm going to look more into it.

[glork]

If this is really true please post a confirmation. I use PADS for layouts and the freeware viewmate just for gerber viewing. I had no idea the editor was so inexpensive. I'm sure a lot of people on the forum would be interested.
ron

[mke_et]

Yeah, it really is minor. In one case, two vias, adjacent to each other. One has a trace to the left, the other a trace to the right. I need to 'swap' them.


--------O
.....O--------------


Change to

-----\ 0
.....O \--------

Pretty simple. The other one is a 'bit' more complex, but not by much.

However, since I'm in there... I wanted to make another change that's not so minor, but not complex either.

Where we had the board done the guy REPEATEDLY insists that 'it has to be relaid/redrawn' for EVERY single change. As a result, one minor change, like above, and you have to TRIPPLE check that nothing else broke. In fact, the mistake above was because of ANOTHER change where he was told CHANGE NOTHING ELSE, and he did. Somehow the leds got put in numeric order on the PCB leading to the 'swap' above. You can't even BEGIN to understand how POed I was!

Anyway... I'm thinking that if I have to, just bite the bullet and pay for ViewMate.

Message Edited by mke_et on 2006-06-06 03:41 PM

[rocco]

Hi, Mike:

I know the feeling. I've been there.

A few years ago, I looked all over for a Gerber editor, and settled on ViewMate from www.pentalogix.com (It looks like you know them already). I do my own layout now, but I still use ViewMate to review the Gerbers before sending them out to fab.

[glork]

Hello Mike.
I do board layouts all the time but I don't know of an inexpensive gerber editor.
However, all may not be lost. Most board houses that I've dealt with will make minor alterations on the gerbers if you sweet-talk them (yes, they definately have gerber editors). If its really minor they don't charge me.
Just a thought.
ron