kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Andy Peters <devel@xxxxxxxxx>]

> On Feb 15, 2016, at 11:08 PM, Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> There is really no point in writing Gerber files in inches; it would take some extraordinarily bad software to not work with metric units.  From a technical viewpoint using mm will require far fewer digits to represent a point to a given tolerance even if the design is on an imperial grid. I think effort is better spent finding out exactly why Seeed rejected the files.

I understand, I was just trying to figure out why they rejected the files. After some back and forth e-mail, I think it’s because they’re using an ancient version of Cam350 that doesn’t understand Gerber Extended Attributes. (I never did get a reply to the request: “Send me your actual official requirements!”) 

For whatever reason, I had enabled Extended Attributes on the designs that got bounced. I re-ran the Gerbers with them off and I just sent the new files to them. We’ll see what happens.

But anyway, previously I did two boards in metric and one in inches, mainly because of board-size reasons, and it never occurred to me that the units would be a problem, and to be honest, I don’t think I paid attention to the units in the Gerbers. Accutrace was fine with what I sent.

-a


> On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 3:28 PM, Andy Peters <devel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This is 4.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.11.
> 
> I submitted Gerbers and drill files to Seeed Studio for fab last night, and they got bounced for some reason which got lost in translation. I think they thought that the two separate sets of Gerbers submitted on the same order were for the same job. But anyway.
> 
> Since Seeed’s support is little more than a set of Wiki articles written by users, it’s not at all clear what they require. But there is a page about generating Gerbers from Kicad here: http://support.seeedstudio.com/knowledgebase/articles/613173-how-to-generate-gerber-from-kicad
> 
> It seems to suggest doing everything in inches, not mm.
> 
> And here is the rub: I designed the board in mm, and can switch at will between mm and inch grids. But when it comes to generating Gerbers, there is no way to change the output from mm to inches. We can do that for the drill files, but not for the Gerber plots. Am I missing something or is this a missing feature?
> 
> -a
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