How can we help you today?

Start a new topic
Discussions FAB 3000 - Gerber/CAM Software FAB 3000 - Gerber/CAM Software

Trying to extract a netlist from my Gerber Files

I am a new user and am trying to extract a netlist from a set of Gerber files, but am not able to do this as is shown in the example video on you tube.
I have performed the following steps:
1. Imported the Gerbers using Autoload.
2. The Gerber files import without any errors, but do show 35 warnings. Reference is made to the “Log”, but I can’t locate this file and the program doesn’t tell where it is. Attached is a screen shot of the import result FIGURE 1.
3. FIGURE 2 shows the board in the workspace.
4. I then use Tools -> Extract Netlist and I get the error message shown in FIGURE 3. No explanation is given as to what layer information is not defined.
5. I answer yes to the dialog that allows the layers to be assigned FIGURE 4, but I don’t know what to do as this point. Can’t find any explanation in the help file documentation as to what is required.
What am I supposed to do to define the layers - and - should I build components first since this information may be missing from the Gerber files??
My ultimate goal is to be able to highlight individual nets as shown in the You Tube Video.
Any guidance you can give me would be greatly appreciated!
1 Comment

Sorry for the delay, but because those were "legacy" gerber files, they probably too 4X longer just to setup  (the actual netlist extraction & comparison combine only takes about 15 seconds processing time - the rest is just setting up and dealing with those older gerbers).  Sorry there's no sound on these... 


Tutorial Movie #1
http://screencast.com/t/1IwSw7cH

Since these Gerber files do not have an aperture list (and they appeared to be generated from an obscure PCB layout tool), FAB 3000 did not have an aperture Rules template to easily load those files (in addition there were two line required for Donut and Thermal Apertures -- very strange.  Anyways I create an Aperture Rules Template (see attached), and showed the process of loading the apertures in plus then having to manually enter the Target & Donut & Thermals manually because the aperture list was eccentric.  Then I saved after all that work.

Note:  To use the Aperture Rule file, unzip and follow the movie above.



Tutorial Movie #2
http://screencast.com/t/o7xWU30RlXAb

I needed to assign the Layer Types so FAB 3000 knows how to perform Netlist Extraction.  I also convert the Gerber Drill layer into an actual drill file (which is required by netlist extraction).  I then showed the results after Netlist extraction, and you can see FAB 3000 was able to reverse engineer the design; lastly I imported the IPC netlist and ran Netlist comparison.  There were two opens detected, so it may take a bit of time to actually trace down to find the source of that conflict (opens/shorts must usually be found manually by highlighting the net in question and verify every connection).


The older/obscure gerber format definitely made it more difficult than I originally expected, and I hope you can find some of the information helpful.

Best regards,
Simon



Login or Signup to post a comment
More topics in FAB 3000 - Gerber/CAM Software
See all 978 topics