kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Alex G." <mr.nuke.me@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've recently tried to order some PCBs from SeeedStudio's fusion PCB
service. They cannot read the drill files (*.drl) generated by kicad.
And for good reason: they don't seem to be in proper RS-274x format.
gerbv (The gEDA version, not our gerbview) can render Kicad's *.drl just
fine, and the workaround for me is to open them in gerbv, then export
them in RS274x format, which then works fine.

I just checked out and built the latest and greatest from lp:kicad, and
regenerated all the gerbers, and sure enough, they are still in the old
format. So even though I select Gerber format from the Drill File
dialog, the generated drill file has the wrong format, and it doesn't
even look like the format of the other generated gerbers (copper,
soldermask, silkscreen).

I found a little nice tool to check the gerbers here:
http://mayhewlabs.com/webGerber/

It's not a very solid renderer, so it won't properly render anything
unusual. This, I believe, makes it great as a testing ground; if it
can't properly render a gerber, what guarantees that the manufacturer's
(proprietary) tools will.

Are there plans to fix the drill file implementation? Or before I even
jump to such arrogant conclusions (sorry guys), how do you guys handle
drill files?

Alex