Numerical Innovations - Help Center

Since you're using AI, most users will simply output as a Postscript (or  PDF), then import directly into ACE 3000, and export to Gerber/Drill. Here's some tutorials showing how to do a Postscript/PDF to Gerber: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpLSxrBBxtg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toCaUFRj0UU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5u0gV0XIyg

Here's another useful link:

http://www.numericalinnovations.com/pages/postscript-and-pdf-conversions-101

Feel free to send me a PDF or Postscript (from your AI design) and I'll show how to quickly convert to Gerber & Drill. 

Note: If you'd prefer to convert DXF instead, please let me know and I'll continue  with creating a tutorial movie for that. The sample DXF has duplicate data (Polylines with Hatch on top), so there is a bit of minor clean up required. 

Best regards,

Simon

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Hi again Simon,

I tried ACE3000 and it worked very well. I have one question, though:

Is it possible to use acrobat layers instead of colors to specify different

layers in the output file?

It would be somewhat convenient because then you could output the gerber

files with names given by the layer names in the PDF file (instead of the

color names, which now gives names like "C00-A6-51.gbr", and

which I then have to rename manually to recognize which file is

which logical layer in my PCB).

Let me know about pricing too, it looks very attractive.

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Glad to hear ACE worked well for you. 

Yes, you're correct it currently separates layers by colors. 

I will look into what would be required to have the ability to use Acrobat Layers.

Drill data requires "Flashed Pads" in order to output the drill holes.

Make sure during PDF Import that you check the option "Flash Round/Donut Shapes".

Then when you check the "Drill" during the Layers Export it will output drill data - see my tutorial below (I will only focus on drill layer).

http://screencast.com/t/zFynIlAMI