To fabricate a bare-board, a manufacturing team (typically referred to as a FAB House) requires layout data to be generated from the source PCB design document. The PCB is fabricated as a series of layers that the manufacturer assembles into a board through a variety of chemical and mechanical processes. Fabrication of each physical layer requires an image of that layer, referred to as a Phototool – a piece of clear film, with black lines, circles and other shapes forming exactly the same patterns as the content of that layer in Altium Designer's PCB Editor.
Altium Designer enables you to quickly and efficiently create a set of Gerber files from your PCB design, once that design is complete and has been successfully verified against design rule constraints. The Gerber files provide the link between the PCB on the design side and the set of phototools required to physically build that PCB on the manufacturing side. With one Gerber file per layer required in the fabrication process, the manufacturer simply takes the Gerber files and loads them into a photoplotting machine, from which the phototools are created.
The shapes that collectively define the image for a layer in each phototool are specified in the corresponding Gerber file as apertures. These can either be embedded according to the RS274X standard, or stored and supplied to the manufacturer in a separate aperture file, depending on the requirements and/or capabilities of the board fabricator.
Gerber output can be generated in one of two ways:
- Using an appropriately configured output generator defined in an Output Job Configuration file (*.OutJob).
- Directly from within the active PCB document using the File»Fabrication Outputs»Gerber Files menu command.
Generated Gerber files can also be opened (loaded) for verification purposes in Altium Designer's integrated CAM Editor. This can be optionally set to happen automatically upon Gerber generation – courtesy of the unified nature of Altium Designer's design environment.
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Important!
This plugin is only available for Altium Designer 13.0 or older versions.
Altium Designer 14.0+ Users: You can install this plugin in the Extensions & Updates section in Altium Designer.
