2013. április 1., hétfő

A fantastic gerber file viewer


Hello there! I found a very good web application I want to show you!

It is called 3D Gerber Viewer from Mayhew Labs.

This is a gerber file viewer, it is free to use, but it does more than an average gerber viewer. It shows You how your PCB will look in 3D. It may not the best for checking for errors, for this I use a simple gerber viewer called Gerbv. But the 3D Gerber Viewer creates fantastic pictures from gerber files, that you can rotate and zoom in and save it as picture like this one:

8th Note Stepped Attenuator version II Driver board PCB



It is easy like a 5 years old boy could use it. Once you open the viewer it loads in you browser and you simply need to drag and drop your gerber files into the window.
If you drop the gerber files to the browser window it sorts them to layers according to the file extensions automatically.

 You can change the layer function from the drop-down menu if you had unusual file extensions of you can omit layer as you will. Then press the Done button.

That's it!  For larger board you may need to wait a little to render, but once it is ready you will find a menu next to the rendered 3D image, there you can turn on or off layers, and you find some instructions.

I found it extremely helpful to see the whole board. It is the exact look you have to get from the PCB lab. Moreover it is easy to show boards this way as taking a good photo from a PCB is not very easy especially without a good camera. I had a great time checking a few of my other projects gerber files with this. It is a must to try for design geeks!

Check it out at: http://mayhewlabs.com/3dpcb for a few more examples and for the online 3D Gerber Viewer.