I too hate photoploting to inspect a suppliers artwork. The main problem for me so far is the $%##@ apertures. Unless you are generating a gerber format which has embedded apertures (which our company will do shortly) there is a definate non-zero chance that the apertures will be screwed up by a fab house when they load the apertures, particularly custom shapes. I have lost count of the number of times we've have apertures rotated or loaded incorrectly. We've caught numerous errors with various suppliers at the film check stage. Part of the problem is that CAD systems and various customers have a wide number of ways of outputing apertures. It's tough for any fab house dealing with the multitude of aperture outputs. When customers universally start using embedded apertures, the need for check film should go the way of the dinosaurs. (I hope) [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Save your company $$$. Unless your company or department is new, why continue to photoplot your pcb's? I can expect to see designers new to a particular cad system, or unsure of a new vendor to repeatedly request photoplots. Once you have your methods defined, viewing photoplots should not be req'd. Companies can spend thousands of dollars on photoplots, and for what? Just to allow some inspector to get that warm fuzzy feeling. Fab houses don't want to use them. It makes more sence for them to use the gerber files. It's much more accurate to build from the gerbers. I'm sure there are many companies out there, who's back rooms are filled with filing cabinets, stuffed with old photoplots. I've seen countless companies spend much more than they should to perpetuate such an obsolete system. You're not alone, my company did it for years. I suppose there are still some fab shops out there who can't use gerber files, but they must be shrinking in number. For now, pcb fab shops must produce film and charge us for it. But in the future I think photo-tools will be eliminated. Why archive an obsolete piece of film?