Use the same resolution (grid) for your Gerber & Excellon data to allow a perfect match.

Use the same units (mm or inch) in your Gerber & Excellon output files.

Use same offset for all Gerber layers and the Excellon file data.

No apertures with a zero-size, and Excellon data does not have zero sized tool.

Do not scale your data, and must be scale 1/1.

Gerber file is also the standard image input format for all bare board fabrication equipment needing image data, such as photoplotters, silkscreen printers, direct imagers or AOI machines and for viewing reference images in different departments.įor PCB assembly, the fabrication data contains the solder paste layers and the central locations of components to create the SMD stencil, place and bond the components. The fabricator input them into a CAM system to prepare data for each step of the PCB fabrication process. Typically, all these files are “zipped” into a single archive that is sent to the PCB fabricator.

This data typically contains a Gerber file for each image layer and drill span (copper layers, solder mask, legend…) though for historic reasons the Excellon drill format is also sometimes used for drilled hole information.

The output PCB fabrication data to allow fabrication of the board. PCBs are designed on a specialized EDA or a CAD system, like Dip Trace, Autodesk Eagle, KiCAD, Cadence OrCAD, pads and Altium Designer. Gerber file is used in PCB fabrication data. The standard file extension is “.GBR” or “.gbr” though other extensions are also used. Files with attributes are called X2 files those without attributes are X1 files. In 2014, the graphics format was extended with the option to add meta-information to the graphics objects.

Extended Gerber, or RS-274X is the current Gerber format.

Gerber Files Two Major Generations of Gerber Format

Diptrace export slot