The circuit milling simulator allows an extended Gerber file generated from a PCB CAD package to be imported so that the circuit milling process can be visualised and analysed. It is being developed as a free-ware tool for both machine time analysis as well as for training. The circuit milling simulator project is supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering (http://www.raeng.org.uk/) and Electronics Yorkshire (http://www.electronicsyorkshire.org.uk/) in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University (http://www.mmu.ac.uk/). To use the simulator follow the steps below:
(i) Open an extended Gerber file
File->Open->Gerber RS274X (then select the demo2.cmp sample file supplied)
(ii) Vectorise the edges
Simulate->vectorise Edges
(iii) Simulate Milling
Simulate->Milling
You cannot simulate the PCB milling process without first vectorising the circuit track edges which is a computationally intensive process and takes a short time to complete. The time taken is dependent on the board image size chosen. The board image dimensions and zoom value can be changed from the Edit menu item. The milling options allow air moves to be displayed if required.
Currently, only a small subset of the extended Gerber
RS274X standard is implemented but the simulator is able to open files
exported from the Eagle PCB CAD package which has a free-ware light edition available at
(http://www.cadsoft.de/).
The first version of the simulator can be downloaded below for both Windows and Linux. In both cases unzip/unpack and run the executable. The Linux version has been tested with Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). The next version of the simulator is under development and will be posted shortly. Alan Crispin (March 2010) News (May 2010) Version 1.4 of the simulator is now available for download for both Windows and Linux. This allows both an extended Gerber file and an Excellon file to be imported so that both the drilling and milling processes can be simulated. Two test files are included in the downloads below, namely; demo2.cmd (component side extended Gerber file) and demo2.drd (Excellon drill file). These have been generated using the Eagle PCB CAD package from the sample PIC demo board. The Windows version has been tested on both Vista and XP. The Linux version has been tested using Ubuntu 10.04. Please note that this is a software simulator for animating the drilling and milling sequences when making a PCB and is not intended for machining an actual board. The vectorising algorithm performs very slowly in Linux. Video A video providing some project overview information can be downloaded from here. This has been compressed using the 7-zip compression format (http://www.7-zip.org/) and can be viewed using the VLC media player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/). News (June 2010) An Electronics Yorkshire Bulletin news story can be found here. News (August 2010) A Debian package installer has been added for Linux Ubuntu/Debian users. Download the circuitplotter_1.4.2_i386.deb file and double click to install. Sample Gerber files can be can be extracted from the sampledata.tar.gz file. The circuit plotter application can be un-installed by using the Synaptic Package Manager. Alan Crispin (2010) Visitor count |
