Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Using GerbView to combine positive and negative layers into a single Gerber file.

Some PCB layout programs generates traces as a positive Gerber file, and power/ground plane as a negative Gerber file, which is supposed to be combined to create a finished Gerber file.
You can use GerbView to perform this task.
To do this you can do the following:
  1. Load the negative power/ground plane file. 
  2. On the right side of the screen you will see a list of available settings for the loaded Gerber file. In the list you will find a setting  named "invert". Enable this option to create a positive display of the layer.
Sample screenshot after adding layer and inverting this:



Then load the second layer and move it to the top of the layer list.
You should now see something like this:



Finally, save the two layers to a single Gerber file using Save As option:


Press OK and select a file name for the new Gerber file.
Final result shown is below:



GerbView® is a Software Companions product, and you will find more information about it here: