[blinkenlight]

@Cynic: In the absence of a proper issue tracker for Line Grinder I'd like to note here that I find the part saying "Support has now been added for G36 and G37 Polygon fill Gerber commands" in the Line Grinder changelog rather misleading, considering such polygons are supposed to be FILLED IN (up to their edges) and apertures are supposed to be NOT APPLYING to them - yet they are currently treated exactly like ordinary line elements (and traced as simple lines, with an aperture). Is this perhaps one of those "all required support is indeed built-in it's just not actually linked into any parsing code that would actually make use of it" thingies...?

[blinkenlight]

I find the part saying "Support has now been added for G36 and G37 Polygon fill Gerber commands" in the Line Grinder changelog rather misleading [...] they are currently treated exactly like ordinary line elements (and traced as simple lines, with an aperture)

@Cynic: It turns out a partial apology is in order here - support for handling polygon fill IS actually present in Line Grinder, it just doesn't play very nice with the rest of the traces: in particular, a zone partially overlapping a trace will not get merged with said track but will be isolated away from it (ie. tracks cut through zones instead of merging with them) - which is a bit of a problem if the zone was placed specifically in order to form a local "blob" on the track in question. But, in turn, the zone perimeter itself doesn't seem to cut the track at least, which is very good.

The reason why this is almost moot is, however, that due to an assumption regarding the contents of a gerber line, said polygon support does not kick in at all - according to the gerber spec, straight segments of a polygon begin with a "G01" (to differentiate them from curved segments that would begin with "G02" etc. ), and (possibly because line 481 of ParseLine() from GerberLine_DCode.cs flat out discards any line that doesn't begin in "D","X" or "Y") polygons normally don't seem to show up AT ALL, in any way, unless one strips their segments in the gerber file of the G01 prefix manually.

I do have at least an explanation for being wrong in the first place regarding the handling of polygons as initially described - apparently, the gerber file generated by KiCad contained the polygon I was experimenting with not once but TWICE. Once as a proper, regular "region" (ie. enclosed in a G36/G37 section) that I was scrutinizing, then once again as regular lines (elsewhere, outside the G36/G37 section). The second instance was obviously picked up (quite reasonably) as regular tracks and mercilessly routed around (including "inside") by Line Grinder, resulting in the mess I saw and commented on, believing it to be the result of the first, proper polygon (that was in fact being completely dropped due to the reason mentioned above). Which means, I'm probably headed over to KiCad for a bug report now - at least they do seem to have a bug tracker...

[Mkmax]

Hello, ive been using the excellent LineGrinder 1.04 for a few days and ran into a problem, im getting the Gerber outputs from Altium Designer, for some of the boards it worked flawlessly but for others Altium insists on making rotated oblongs that end up in Aperture macros like :

G04:AMPARAMS|DCode=27|XSize=19.7mil|YSize=88.6mil| CornerRadius=0mil|HoleSize=0mil|Usage=FLASHONLY|Ro tation=225.000|XOffset=0mil|YOffset=0mil|HoleType= Round|Shape=Round|*
%AMOVALD27*
21,1,0.0689,0.0197,0.0000,0.0000,315.0*
1,1,0.0197,-0.0244,0.0244*
1,1,0.0197,0.0244,-0.0244*
%
%ADD27OVALD27*%

After looking everywhere I couldnt find out how to turn it aperture macros off like the help does in Eagle so i set out to modify the gerber myself but i was not able to find much about writing/reading apertures or aperture macros

could anyone give me any advice on how to proceed ? are there any design considerations i could do to prevent Altium from making these rotated oblongs (edit: ok, not rotating components and avoiding octagonal pads fixes my problems but i would really like to being able to rotate components) ? my attempts at changing the aperture lines have only ended on a mangled board shape so far

[HPB]

Hi MKmax,

LineGrinder is nice Gerber to Gcode software and it's free for now. The developer may have pulled the plug on this converter.

Am using it as-is. In Altium avoid shapes/tools that got you the errors in the first place.

In Easy-PC for example, I avoid placing text in on any layer.

I did try out some of the Gerber to gcode out there, most are just outright unreliable.

The next thing is LineGrinder does not have the milling path optimised. looking at the gcode
it generates. See what PCB-Gcode-Wizard does for PCB-GCODE ULP program going for $18.

I particular don't like Eagle to PCB-GCODE ULP route. Am fine with LineGrinder.

Cheers,
Hanspeter.

[vph]

Hi Hanspeter and everybody on the list,
as you mentioned Altium I remembered that some of the older versions had a script called MillExporter which outputed code for controlling Rolland routers (not a G-code). I started modifying the script replacing Rolland commands with G-code commands. It kind of worked but I didn't finish it as I'm not very good in Delphi programming. It would be a very easy task for somebody knowing Delphi. Maybe somebody here on this list will want to help and continue. I can provide the script to the level I made it...

Greetings,
vph

[Mkmax]

Thank you for your advice

I hope the developer goes back to work into Linegrinder, it works quite well, i've had no problem with text using Altium designer, the only things that ive seen cause unwanted apertures have been octagonal pads which is no problem and components rotated arbitrarily (any angle other than 0º, 90º, 180º or 270º) which is a bummer for high pin count components that you might want to rotate 45º

The G code output also needs a few touches before using it since it will not set the coordinates (G53-59), it uses G04 with seconds (some controllers need milliseconds) and there are no options to set up variables for Z and sometimes it goes down to working Z a line before it should when touching the copper for the first time potentially ruining the board, nothing that cant be fixed in a minute with notepad

Ive tried the MillExporter script in Altium but i didnt not know how to interpret the output, its probably too much work right now, it might be easier to go modify Linegrinder since the sources are provided, but for now ill just avoid the things that cause problems

[vph]

I tried LineGrinder too but it couldn't handle round board shapes and this is why I stopped.
Here are the MillExporter changes I made: Index of /millExp
It would be nice if somebody could continue and post here the results.

[kcassella]

Hello,

I'm using the Line Grinder for the first time. I was able to open the Bottom, Top, and Outline.GBR files fine and convert it to Gcode. I'm using Eagle Cad and the Device output Excellon for my drill file. When I try to open the Drill.GBR file I get the following error: 'Sorry, this file cannot be opened because some of its contents are not yet supported. Error message was: Cannot cope with unknown Gerber code on line 4 code is >T01C0.0200 <'
Could someone please help me?

Thanks

[stern-69]

I downloaded Linegrinder today to see if it would generate Gcode from Design spark. Since I have yet to build my PCB router, I have no idea if the code works, but seemed to translate ok based on the screen data (showing the isolation pattern on a pretty complex and crowded board I did in the past). Sure hope the designer carries on with it, as for all the software packages I have evaluated in the past (all sorts of beta testing) this is really nice, and something I would love to see continued on with (as Im used to Design spark).

[hondaman900]

Hi stern-69, I too started using DesignSpark and have been trying to get Line Grinder to work. I've been step-by-step through it and get a big red "X" across what should be the isolation track plot. It won't generate GCode either. Can you share your successful steps and what version of DesignSpark you're using? I'm using v.3 of DS and I'm outputting RS-274-D Gerbers. Can't get this to work with either my PCB or the demo PCB's that come with DS.

Any suggestions....?

[hondaman900]

Here's a screenshot of what I get after loading the DS example file and following the Line Grinder tutorial step-by-step. I'm running on Win8. Any help is very much appreciated.
Attachment 219986

[stern-69]

Well, I wish I could say I even had a clue about what I was doing (i dont lol). When I ran Linegrinder, I asked it to grab one of the board layouts I had done last year (right now using ver 5.1 of Design spark) and it loaded the pattern in the window (was pleased to say the least). I then (after trying to figure out how to do it) asked it to create the Gcode and the window changed to a foil pattern that showed the actual "cut" being milled around the traces (did give me a message that it couldnt do the board right as double sided because I had no origin marks defined, or something like that). Looked at the Gcode, and the file had entries that looked like positioning code, but being totally new to CNC I have no idea if it was right.

[blinkenlight]

Here's a screenshot of what I get after loading the DS example file and following the Line Grinder tutorial step-by-step. I'm running on Win8. Any help is very much appreciated.
Attachment 219986

No idea what the problem is, but I suspect it's either the Win8 OS (you could try a WinXP machine or posting the gerber file here so we can try it as well) or some format quirk of your gerber file (different people generally seem to have a rather loose idea of what is and what is not standard-compliant gerber, it's somewhat of an exhausting "whack-the-exactly-right-format" game).

[stern-69]

Not sure if it helps, but Im running XP. I know when I upgraded DS a while back it messed me up as the new version wouldnt work with old drawings, so maybe its a version issue. Seems that the last rev (to 5.1 which I did 3 days ago when checking out LG) seemed to take my PCB layouts ok, although i lost my private library lol.
Hoping this combo works ok, if not I may have to use a PC software that generates Gcode .... I just really dont want to change AGAIN lol

If I could figure out how to post pics I could show you what I get