kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Mitch Davis <mjd+launchpad.net@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi JP,

(I'm Mr. Hackvana)

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 6:14 PM, jp charras <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Le 15/10/2014 18:23, Jon Neal a écrit :
>>
>> The gerbers were generated with KiCad BZR 5101, gerber format 4.6, mm for
>> the units, and absolute positioning.
>>
>> Another person that used the same pcb service I used had the same problem
>> using the same gerber settings with BZR 4988.
>>
>> The service (hackvana) believes this to be a KiCad issue rather than an
>> issue at the fab. I tried looking at the gerbers a bit, but I don't know
>> enough about the gerber format to know what to look for.
>
> I had a look to you silkscreen Gerber file (rfidAndPOE-F_SilkS.gto)
>
> You should ask your board maker to test your files with GCPrevue.

I have spoken with the factory, and they have CAM350 and Genesis2000.

If a package doesn't complain, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a
valid file, it means that the viewer is sufficiently tolerant of that
gerber file.  (As a side-project, I've been hacking on gerbmerge to
improve its ability to accept malformed gerber files, rather than
complain about them, where complain == crash)

> You also try to use the 4.5 format (not recommended, but sometimes needed).

I can't insist that my customers do this, and I don't like to mess
with a customer's zip file.

I like the analysis that nickoe did, which shows a strong correlation
between circles in the silkscreen file, and the arcs on the board.  I
think we're on the right track.

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 5:11 AM, Nick Østergaard <oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I might have identified the issue. I did checkout Jon's board on his
> github account, then I grepped around a bit and found that: grep
> circle POE.kicad_pcb  | grep "0 0)"   matches almost the number of
> circles that appear on silk.
>
> I have attached a minimal board that I think should show the bug.
> Mitch, can you please try to send that though your fabs viewer?

I don't have a recent version of KiCad to generate gerbers from (silly
Fedora still thinks it's 2011).  nickoe, can you please generate me a
zip of gerbers I can pass to the factory?  (hope you can try them out
at gerblook.org first).

My regards,

Mitch.