Hi Dharma!
I'm assuming you want to be able to do this on the cheap...like for free, except for someone's time. I'm hoping that you don't have a board that has hundreds of components, in that case the time investment will be substantial.
You can download just about any free gerber viewer and get X/Y coordinates of each component. I've used an earlier version of GC Preview (version 8.12), so the steps I'm about to detail, deal with that viewer. (I still have the *.zip file of the viewer, but it's 8MB in case you want it).
Bring up the solderpaste and silkscreen layer of the gerber in the viewer. Then position the cursor at the zero/zero point on the board (where your pick and place machine zeros out from) and press the "Z" key on your keyboard. In the upper right hand side of the monitor you will see that the coordinates have zero'ed out. Then just move the cursor to the center of each component footprint and write the reference designator with the X/Y coordinate and theta rotation down. You'll then have the basic data to manually key in for your machine placement programming.
I know that sounds like a lot of work, but like I said, all it will cost is someone's time. The only other way that I know of is to get a software package that will do that for you, and there are many out there. GC PowerPlace, CircuitCam, etc., but you're going to pay a pretty penny for them...
Steve Gregory
Dharma Kemp-Bresett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I have an interesting question (which I will be posting on a couple of
forums so some of you may see this more than once)....
If all I have is gerbers can I make a placement file from them? I don't need
a netlist just x - y coordinates... If anyone has been in the position to
have tried this it is probably one of you....as I have heard tales of some
pretty amazing workarounds just reading the posts here I have high hopes.
:-)
Thanks in advance,
Dharma
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