Well Phillip, it all depends upon what your looking at the information
with?
Before we can advise you upon the software we need to know what it has
to be compatible with ?

You need to look in the software that you are going to do this
overlaying with & see what it can import.
If it can import Gerber then the jobs very easy, but if its DXF then you
need to get something to create them.

You did not say if the PCB is one that was designed by yourselves as if
so it should be a straightforward job
to create say a Gerber or DXF file (depending upon your PCB CAD system)
that shows the component
outlines etc. If your doing this for someone else, then you would have
to get the legend file off of them.

There are Gerber to DXF programs available, CAM350 is one (but it does
cost a bit, plus some  for the DXF interface).
Alternatively there are some shareware/cheaper packages that can do this
as I'm sure other netters can advise you one.



>-----Original Message-----
>From:  Phil O'Reilly [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent:  Wednesday, May 19, 1999 4:24 PM
>To:    [log in to unmask]
>Subject:       [TN] Looking for a silk screen software
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>        my name is Philippe O'Reilly and I work in the field of PCB
>inspection. We obtain thermal signature of a PCB under electrical
>stimulation and compare this signature to a reference signature to find
>out if there are some defects on the card. One feature we want to add is
>to overlay a silk screen with the component's contours and their names
>on top of the thermal signature of the PCB. This would help us to
>quickly find out the exact spots of the defects. At the moment, we
>manually reconstruct the silk screen from the electronic schematics. I
>am wondering if there exists a software that takes some PCB description
>(Gerber file, ...), processes it to extract the silk screen we want
>(component's coutours, their names, and their pins).
>
>If anyone can give me some advices or is aware of the product I am
>looking for, I would be more than happy to hear from them.
>
>Thanks!!
>
>Philippe O'Reilly
>Test Engineer
>[log in to unmask]
>ART Advanced Research Technologies Inc.
>2300 Alfred Nobel, Saint-Laurent, Québec H4S 2A4
>Tel:  (514)-832-0777  Fax: (514)-832-0778
>
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