kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 10:03:31PM +1000, Mitch Davis wrote:
> I think the name Protel is there to indicate the historical origin,
> rather than be the name of a current package.  (Do factories still use

Exactly. In the past the dialog said 'proper' but I assumed it was
a typo since they were the extension protel used; remember those days
where 8+3 filename times, so you had to be creative :P

AFAIK Altium has a configurable CAM processor so it wouldn't be correct
to call them 'altium extension' (unless it still use these by default:D)

> Gerber plotters?  Do factories still use Excellon drill machines?)

It was something like Gerber->Barco->Ucamco (at least that's what
wikipedia says...), so you could say that gerber plotter are *still* in
use. Well, a little different since they are raster machine these
days...

No idea if there are many other photoplotter manufacturer arounds;
however it seems that everyone eventually standardized on RS274X (i.e.
gerber). At least, it seems that *everyone* uses the same preprocessor, at
least here in italy (genesis)

As for the drill tapes, excellon is still in business so I'd say that
even for these, yes, they still use them :D there are other format in
use however (Sieb&Mayer, for example).

Pick and place and AOI however are a whole hell of custom file formats,
don't worry :D

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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