Exporting Gerber files from Designspark

[Thea]

About this tutorial

AISLER understands Gerber files generated from Designspark. This tutorial shows you in five easy steps how your Designspark export will always succeed when imported.

Step 1: Open Output->Manufacturing Plots

Step 2: Click Device Setup

Adjust according to screen and click OK.

Step 3: Click Add Plot and use Gerber

We need to have the board outline in a separate file, so we will add a plot to the Output

Step 4: Rename the added plot to boardoutline

Step 5: Deselect unneccesary plots

Please remove “Top Documentation” from the list

Step 6: Adjust proper settings

a) Set the drill settings to 2 Integer and 4 Decimal, deselect metric units

b) Set Plot From and To on all layers to the same values as the boardoutline

c) Click NC Drill in Options to 2 Integer and 4 Decimal, deselect metric units

Step 7: Zip it all up

Step 8: Profit

Upload your project

[Pinhead]

Hi…
I’m lost…
I use DesignSpark 10, and never had a problem with 2-sided boards.
But now, I am trying for the first time to layout a 4-layer board, and I can’t get it right…
I setup the Gerber and Excellon devices as described above (different precisions), but nothing is accepted as drill data…

But, on this page, the extension of the Gerber files (gbr) are different than in the page “Naming Conventions for traditionnal Gerber Files” (ger)

Here are the different plots defined in DS:

Any suggestion is welcome…
Thanks

David.

[Thea]

Hi ,

I will inspect your files to see what went wrong, will give you feedback later.
Could you try to create a ODB++ export in the meantime? That should be much easier as you dont need to export the drill files manually. You can just upload the odb++ archive directly to our site, no extra work needed.

[Thea]

It seems like there are components and drills placed outside of the board outline.

[Pinhead]

Hello and thank you (again !) for your help, Thore.

The import of the .tgz file failed …

[Thea]

Thats my Job.

I am very sorry that you encounter these Problems. I will discuss the Issue with our CAM Engineer tomorrow.

We unfortunately do not have a Design Spark License at the moment, So I cant try and replicate the Issue directly. Is the latest project you uploaded a 4 Layer Boards? The Gerber only contained the two outer layer.

Could you send me your Gerber/ODB++ files to thore@aisler.net ? I will forward them tomorrow.

[Pinhead]

There is a free licence for DS, which is the one I use.
Indeed, my last upload is recognized as having only 2 layers, but the content of th ZIP file includes 2 internal Layers.
Maybe a problem of naming conventions ?
See the content of the zip here:

I will re-export a new zip with my initial problem (all layers present, but no drill data) to your mail adress.