Douglas Electronics Home autorouter AutoRtr BasExt basicextended breadboard ColorDup DEhome DesWorks diskduplicator DiskDup Manufact Order Output prolayout ProLay prosystem ProSys utilities CAD Software Professional System Utilities Input Output <--- Gerber Viewing Layout Lite index Upgrades Hardware Services Request Literature Orders Tech Support Douglas History Contact Information	Output Utilities The Layout Lite and Professional Layout programs can be augmented to produce output files in any of several industry standard formats using optional utility programs. Not everyone will need all of these optional utilities--in fact, if you use our manufacturing services, as many of our customers do, you do not need any of them, since we manufacture directly from the high level CAD/CAM files our software creates. These utilities give you the optional muscle to perform exacting conversions to/from a wide range of industry standard file formats when required. Pen Plot The Pen Plot utility is included with the Professional Layout program. Pen Plot creates a pen plotter file in any of several formats from your Layout file. Plotter languages supported include HPGL, HPGL-2, DMPL, and RG-PL. Three output modes are available. "Ball and Stick" is the fastest, and is useful for quickly checking point-to-point connections, creating stuff charts, etc. "Outline" mode draws the exact perimeters of all features, and "Fill" mode draws the outlines and fills them in completely. A pen width setting controls the overlap in the Fill mode and insures the accuarcy of the outlines. A serial communications driver is built in, which allows you to output directly to virtually any pen plotter, as well as write the plot file to disk for use with networked plotters. Very complete. Gerber File Creator The Gerber File Creator utility creates industry standard Gerber photoplot files from your Layout files. Aperture assignments are made automatically on the fly and recorded, and an option exists to make automatic assignments according to a pre-defined table, if desired, to support any vendor-specific conventions. The program also allows manual re-assignment of apertures, if desired. Options exist for defining complex Pad conversions as a single Flash aperture, or breaking it down into it's constituent elemnts. Global offsets can be established to allow plotting multiple imageshtml to a single piece of film, and since Gerber files are all plain ASCII text, cross-platform compatibility is a given. Drill File Creator Similar to Gerber File Creator, our Drill File Creator utility creates industry standard N/C Drill files in any of several formats (Excellon, by far the most common, is the default, but nine formats are supported, including Metric, Gibbs, and Olivetti). Again offsets may be assigned if desired, and again cross-platform compatibility is assured. Drill File Creator also includes a serial communications driver which allows you to output directly to a paper tape punch, as well as writing the file to disk. DXF File Creator Another optional output utility that some will find useful is our DXF File Creator. This program creates "Drawing Exchange Format" text files from your layout, which allows an image of the PCB to be imported by mechanical drafting programs such as AutoCAD. The setup options for this utility are even simpler, simply select a layer, choose which features to include in the conversion, and give the DXF output file a name. Too easy. PostScript File Creator The PostScript File Creator utility creates industry standard PostScript files from your Layout files. The program is very similar in usage to printing from the Layout programs, however the PostScript File Creator saves PostScript files of higher resolution (important for strict tolerances on PCBs) and without the page breaks that would be imposed by using a printer driver. If you plan on photoplotting PostScript files, this utility is essential for accuracy and size control. To Order Utilities Use the Software & Support Order Form to order software products.
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