Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Gerber viewer/handler

R

RHRRC

Jan 1, 1970
0
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.

Thanks
 
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.

Thanks

What's a "handler"? I've honestly never heard this term in
relationship to a program before... Is Notepad a text handler?
 
M

Martin Riddle

Jan 1, 1970
0
RHRRC said:
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.

Thanks

CAM 350 , Good package.

For the free stuff I use the popular one GC-Preview.

Cheers
 
J

JeffM

Jan 1, 1970
0
Martin said:
CAM 350 , Good package.
http://groups.google.com/group/sci....ry.*+sans-editing-*+*.stripped.down.*.version

For the free stuff I use the popular one GC-Preview.
Stuart recently noted a new release of Gerbv.
http://groups.google.com/group/sci....to-end.tool.chain.*.*.*+viewer+qq-qq+uu+Linux
and Ken Smith mentioned a minor gotcha.
http://groups.google.com/group/sci....to-end.tool.chain.*.*.*+viewer+qq-qq+uu+Linux

A bit later, Stuart announced a Windows port (installer).
news:[email protected]
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
What's a "handler"? I've honestly never heard this term in
relationship to a program before... Is Notepad a text handler?


No, a text wrestler ;-)

Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?

A long time ago I had bought a DOS-based viewer from France but I can't
find the disk anymore. It had transparent coloring but the menu was all
en francaise. Didn't bother me much but it drove visitors crazy.
 
D

DJ Delorie

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joerg said:
Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming
as most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes
so on RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does
anyone know a Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least
grid-style color settings?

The latest (v2.0+) gerbv does translucent layers, if you set the
rendering to normal or high quality. It also has an XOR mode.
http://gerbv.sourceforge.net/
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Anton said:
No, a text wrestler ;-)

Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?
[Snipped]

Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.

From Pentalogix? Thanks, Anton. Will download now, they just sent me
the password.
 
A

Anton Erasmus

Jan 1, 1970
0
No, a text wrestler ;-)

Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?
[Snipped]

Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.

Regards
Anton Erasmus
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joel said:
www.bugmenot.com is good for finding such passwords if you don't want to go
through the whole registration procedure.

I don't mind giving my address to a reputable company. After all, it is
nice of them to provide the community with a free viewer. I have tried
Viewmate before and it didn't work well for my stuff but will try the
new version.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Anton said:
No, a text wrestler ;-)

Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?
[Snipped]

Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.

Hey thanks! Viewmate does do some colors in transparent. Not all but
some. This will be much easier on the wrist. Zoom is not as good as in
GC-Preview so there will be times when one viewer is better and times
where the other is better.
 
B

Boris Mohar

Jan 1, 1970
0
Anton said:
[email protected] wrote:
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.

Thanks
What's a "handler"? I've honestly never heard this term in
relationship to a program before... Is Notepad a text handler?

No, a text wrestler ;-)

Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?
[Snipped]

Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.

Hey thanks! Viewmate does do some colors in transparent. Not all but
some. This will be much easier on the wrist. Zoom is not as good as in
GC-Preview so there will be times when one viewer is better and times
where the other is better.

If your mouse has a scroll wheel, the CTRL - scroll for zoom
 
R

rickman

Jan 1, 1970
0
Anton said:
On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:36:08 GMT, Joerg
[email protected] wrote:
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.
Thanks
What's a "handler"? I've honestly never heard this term in
relationship to a program before... Is Notepad a text handler?
No, a text wrestler ;-)
Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings? [Snipped]

Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.

Hey thanks! Viewmate does do some colors in transparent. Not all but
some. This will be much easier on the wrist. Zoom is not as good as in
GC-Preview so there will be times when one viewer is better and times
where the other is better.

If you don't like Viewmate, try GCpreview. It does transparent colors
and has the ever so nice zoom by scroll wheel. I use FreePCB for
layout and the author took the scroll wheel one step further. Once
you have moved the mouse, the first click of the scroll wheel does not
zoom, but just pans to put the cursor at center. So you can more
easily move as well as zoom using just the mouse and wheel.

The issue you see with just "some colors" working in transparency is
because of the way they implement it. They are just "adding" the
values of the three primary colors (or maybe taking a max). So if the
result is not different from one of the two colors being "mixed" it
will look like it is opaque. All you need to do is to change the
colors. It is hard to make a lot of planes different enough to be
useful, but you can easily get some 6 or 8 planes to contrast two at a
time.

I think this is due to the ancient roots of layout software. In DOS
days the graphics hardware was much more limited. Today the way to do
this is to implement true "transparency" with a more complex mixing
algorithm making one layer transparent with the other showing
through. If you check out a photo/art program you can see the
difference this makes. I don't know how practical this is. Two
layers is one thing, but displaying a dozen layers transparently may
be a real chore.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Robert said:
Actually, their older version works great for me - BUT - the newer
version cannot work for the lack of some kind of missing module that the
installer complains about.


You mean Viewmate? I just tried the latest and it works. The one thing
it doesn't seem to do but GC-PreView does is copy the layout window
without the menus to the clipboard. That way you can import it into
MS-Paint, spritz some graffiti on areas to be improved and email it off.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Boris said:
Anton said:
On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:36:08 GMT, Joerg

[email protected] wrote:
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.

Thanks
What's a "handler"? I've honestly never heard this term in
relationship to a program before... Is Notepad a text handler?
No, a text wrestler ;-)

Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?
[Snipped]

Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.
Hey thanks! Viewmate does do some colors in transparent. Not all but
some. This will be much easier on the wrist. Zoom is not as good as in
GC-Preview so there will be times when one viewer is better and times
where the other is better.

If your mouse has a scroll wheel, the CTRL - scroll for zoom

Aha! Thanks. I guess those are the tricks one has to find out by chance.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
rickman said:
Anton said:
@netzero.com wrote:
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.
Thanks
What's a "handler"? I've honestly never heard this term in
relationship to a program before... Is Notepad a text handler?
No, a text wrestler ;-)
Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?
[Snipped]
Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.
Hey thanks! Viewmate does do some colors in transparent. Not all but
some. This will be much easier on the wrist. Zoom is not as good as in
GC-Preview so there will be times when one viewer is better and times
where the other is better.

Sorry, couldn't read your post in s.e.d. because I had to block the
whole gmail domain. Google lets spammers have free reign and they don't
seem to do anything about it. But I still had it open in the s.e.cad
group. Google used to be a good company, but ...

If you don't like Viewmate, try GCpreview. It does transparent colors
and has the ever so nice zoom by scroll wheel. I use FreePCB for
layout and the author took the scroll wheel one step further. Once
you have moved the mouse, the first click of the scroll wheel does not
zoom, but just pans to put the cursor at center. So you can more
easily move as well as zoom using just the mouse and wheel.

Hmm, got to give it another shot. I really like GC-PreView but could not
make it transparent.

The issue you see with just "some colors" working in transparency is
because of the way they implement it. They are just "adding" the
values of the three primary colors (or maybe taking a max). So if the
result is not different from one of the two colors being "mixed" it
will look like it is opaque. All you need to do is to change the
colors. It is hard to make a lot of planes different enough to be
useful, but you can easily get some 6 or 8 planes to contrast two at a
time.

What they did in the DOS days was turn a layer into mesh, like a screen
door. That let you see the layers below.

I think this is due to the ancient roots of layout software. In DOS
days the graphics hardware was much more limited. Today the way to do
this is to implement true "transparency" with a more complex mixing
algorithm making one layer transparent with the other showing
through. If you check out a photo/art program you can see the
difference this makes. I don't know how practical this is. Two
layers is one thing, but displaying a dozen layers transparently may
be a real chore.


But in the DOS days stuff like this just plain worked ;-)
 
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