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December 1997

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Subject:
From:
RICK TAORMINO <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
TechNet Mail Forum.
Date:
Mon, 8 Dec 1997 12:21:58 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
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text/plain (86 lines)
John,

I can sympathize with your plight.  Although I don't have the same problem
(we have a newer RIP), file transfers and disk space on our fileserver have
been sore spots.  This may be obvious, but have you done a draw-to-flash
conversion on your CAM?  Depending on the board technology, maybe you can
reduce your precision, ie. 5 digits down to 4 or maybe even 3.  Try
experimenting with leading vs trailing suppression to see if you get any
improvement.

Hope this helps,
Rick

At 09:03 AM 12/8/97 +0000, you wrote:
>Good Morning,
>
>I would appreciate some feedback on the following issue (and I
>apologize in advance for the length of this message).
>
>We are plotting with a Fire 9300 plotter using, granted, a somewhat
>antiquated RIP 2 (Raster image processor).  Our RIP is unable to
>accept gerber data with step and repeat codes so the size of data
>files we receive is of a concern to us as plot files of larger than
>14M must be run as multipass plots.  At initial processor  load times
>of about 5min/M, large plot files can eat up a significant chunk of
>our day.
>
>We have been noticing lately a significant increase in customer file
>size particularly due to drawn "cleanup rings" around ground plane
>isolations.  Upon querying one of my customers on this I was told the
>following ;
>
>He uses Protel for his board layout and has been quite conscious of
>the size of his gerber output files.  Previous designs were output as
>Vector Plot files to reduce size. ( We certainly appreciate this as
>it reduces file transfer time, processing time at the CAM station
>(data load, screen redraws, netlist extract etc.) and makes for the
>smallest possible output files to our plotter, after all, my plotter
>hardware, a significant investment in most shops, is designed to
>rasterize the plot data).
>
>When trying to do this with Protel's latest offering, he experienced
>numerous hardware "Crashes".  Upon contacting Protel, he was told
>that the software has been designed to provide rasterized gerber data
>(this setting did eliminate the "Crash" problem) and that if his
>board shop has a problem with this that they should get with the
>program.
>
>So, my question is, my somewhat outdated plotter processing
>hardware aside,  am I the only one out there who finds it beneficial
>to process the smallest possible data sets at all steps of PCB
>fabrication?
>
>Regards
>
>John Parsons
>Circuit Graphics Ltd.
>
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