kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[jp charras <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Le 31/08/2017 à 21:26, Diego Herranz a écrit :
> Hi JP,
> 
> Is this something new in GerberX2? I had never seen Gerber jobfiles before...
> 
> I've given it a try (export and then load on GerbView) and seems to work OK, it loads every layer by
> just loading the jobfile.
> Any other gerber viewer which supports it to give it a try? gerbv
> <https://sourceforge.net/projects/gerbv> doesn't seem to support it.
> 
> Thanks,
> Diego
> 

This is a new file, and its format is not fully fixed yet.
see:
https://www.ucamco.com/files/downloads/file/209/gerber_job_file_201708.pdf?7e2667f419c7b270f4a55b4761413a6e
and is a very recent file format.
So it is unlikely it is supported now by other Gerber viewers.
Kicad supports this file because I was contacted by Ucamco to see if a job file could be supported
by Kicad.
So because Gerbview does not have a project config file, and the support of a gerber job file is a
similar feature, I added this support.
Note this file will be really useful when Pcbnew has a decent layer stack manager giving dielectric
info, copper thickness of each layer (and a few other parameters).

(Note also Ucamco gives me a very good technical support by testing files created by Kicad during
development of new Gerber attributes, since the beginning of X2 features)


However, this file format does not change the plot file format.
The job file gives extra infos that cannot be inserted in plot files.

Gerbv does not support a job file (it unfortunately does not support yet the X2 format), but like a
few other viewers, has a project config file (that contains the list of Gerber files to load).

Gerbview/Pcbnew has good support of X2 features, and in Gerbview you can highlight a net or a
footprint or items which have the same attribute.

This is very useful when checking the Gerber files of a project.

-- 
Jean-Pierre CHARRAS