Homebrew PCBs

Sounds like a great software.
I did not know about it, and i would have never thought there is one to  
detect holes.

ST

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 17:50:38 +0200, mikezcnc <eemikez@...> wrote:

> Cristian, Stefan,
> www.platincnc.com is definitely a good catch and even the price of
> $150 seems to be on a low end for that kind of sw. Actually, that
> package answered my next question: is it possible to get an NC drill
> file out of a bmp scan, sounds insane, doesn't it? In short: yes it
> does and very good, too! First I tried to do it  w/o platinum by
> converting PCB (in PDF) to DXF, my way. I used
> http://www.cadkas.com/downengpdf.php 'PDF 2 DXF 2.0', scroll down.
> The quality of the dxf conversion is amazing but a thick PCB line
> consists of a high number of thin dxf lines. That was the end of my
> trial although I can see a potential of that method, except for: no
> NC file would come out of it.
> Then I tried platinum. I got a very good conversion of a bitmap
> image into a NC drill file. Awesome! I couldn't view the NC file
> because a demo has this feature disabled but I clearly saw that the
> program did recognize all holes as holes, which was my next question!
> I couldn't get the Gerber out of the program. I only got 'milling
> paths' and I think it refers to isolation milling and if so then I
> believe that having a TT with a laminator and a laser printer (all
> even low grade) will produce excellent results in the hands of a
> skillful TT-er  Hey, I do TTs just to cheer me up.
> So, I also have a problem getting rid of that heavy raster screen
> (background) on the screen  but it is probably my lack of experience
> with it. Not even knowing the details, it seems to me that that
> program is excellent.  Thank you guys for an enjoyable Sunday
> morning  Mike