Gerber 10.2 Full + Key
Hortense Malovich
I am having difficulty with the bottom soldermask gerber file in a 2 layer PCB in which all components are located on the top layer. There are no holes or any other features on the bottom side, so essentially the bottom soldermask gerber file should be blank. The bottom soldermask gerber file is generated by OrCAD, but when I try to open it in a gerberviewer, the file type is not recognized. Further, the PCB manufacture we sent the board to is having trouble with it as well. They had to ask us if there was soldermask on the bottom layer or if it was unmasked altogether. I'm curious if there is a work around for this situation and any help is greatly appreciated.
You have a single sided design. Copper only on top based upon your description. Why are you outputting the bottom mask? The is no need for it. You are not soldering anything and the is no copper to cover. However, it is still interesting that your bottom mask artwork would not output correctly. Maybe it was due to the fact that there were no D Codes or anything to compute. So, it went bonkers. In these cases the output should warn the users that there is nothing to produce and will terminate. If you still would like to flood the bottom of your board with a mask anyway. I suggest you add note on your fabrication drawing telling the PCB supplier to flood the bottom with mask. They don't need an Gerber to do that.
I guess I didn't describe the board properly. I have a plane on the bottom side and some tented vias, but no features in the bottom soldermask. I attached the file that is generated. My gerber viewer doesn't recognize it, but when I open it in a text editor it seems to be ok.
Inside your Gerber file you are missing XY coordinates and a few other things. Compare it to an artwork file that works. You will see what I see. I did try to re-import your file back into the PCB editor. During import it stated "no photoplot file specified. Due I think to the missing stuff. Try just adding a shape fill to layer "Board geometry - Bottom Solder mask" over the entire bottom of your board and rerun your artwork.That should work for you. I just did the same thing to verify the results. Good Luck
Hello there!
Today I faced this trouble while working on project - there is no way to import gerber file to manufacture it using fusion CAM module.
Why inegrate whole electronics module to F360 with no way to direct import and manufacture PCBs from other programms (Altium in my case).
Thank you for posting on the Fusion 360 Electronics forum. As you have discovered we have limited capacity of importing files made by other application or Gerber files at this time. From the PCB editor we do have a ULP that will be able to import a basic 274x format of Gerber files. This is intended to only be used as a template for the PCB. If you sign in to library.io you will be able to use the online library converter that works for OrCAD and Altium libraries. Expanding the import capabilities of Fusion 360 to other electronics file format is being considered and will be added in time.
PCB isolation routing is a unique CAM process that Fusion 360 CAM would not be the best choice IMHO. Even if you could import the gerber data, it is going to be a fiddly process. I use Fusion 360 CAM daily for 3-7 axis milling and mill-turn as well as designing electronics including PCB layout.
Something dedicated like or similar take gerbers and create CAM data optimized for PCB prototyping is likely a better option for this very specialized process.
Basically Fusion Electronics has an import for Gerber data. As Edwin wrote in his initial answer, the import function is limited to basic Extended Gerber RS-274X format and mainly used to import simple templates for a PCB design.
As I understand your post, you wanted to import your Altium design files into Fusion and mill out the PCB board afterwards, right? As Edwin already wrote, there is no direct import of Altium schematics or boards into Fusion. But you could try to export in Altium the so-called ACCELL-ASCII format from your board/schematic. I am not 100% sure how this export option is called, but it is something like Pads Ascii format or the like....
I just popped on this thread after searching for this specific subject. I am having the same kind of problem.
I have a Gerber file from a client which contains among all the data, a file with a routed track for milling Small PCB's out of a larger panel. I would like to use that file as a basis for creating a 3D model.
The plan is that I will create a Jig for holding this specific PCB in one of our factory tools, and being able to import the Gerber file for the milling, and use that as a template for creating a 3D model would be helpful.
So what I would do in this case is import the gerber file into a 2D PCB and then from there generate the 3D PCB for milling purposes. You can import gerbers in the 2D PCB by using the import-gerber.ulp that comes with Fusion 360.
I've tried to bring gerbers into CreoView, and it works but does not overlay them all like the Viewmate tool. I'm fairly new to CreoView, so I'm guessing there's a way to load them all into the same viewer and manage layers accordingly, but so far I can only get two layers to overlay at one time. Not extremely helpful to see the big picture.
wow, that's really sad, no replies in 5 years. i have the same question today. i can open individual Gerber files with Creo View, but I cannot open multiple Gerber files in Creo View. When I open a second one, it closes the first one. i am using Creo View MCAD with the Creo View ECAD Adapters. anyone know if we can open all the Gerber files in a muli-layer format with Creo View ECAD?
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