RS274X and PADS Photo Plots

[Roy]

In the photo plotter setup, selecting the RS274X option, what actually happens when you enable the "Use Fill Mode", and Use Aperture Macros"

We have a PCB that chokes the Genesis 2000 software, and enabling these options reduce the gerber size by a factor of 3.

[Skip Yutkus]

An aperture macro is a flashed fill, (or sometimes called raster fill), it consists of a series of custom definitions that will result in a composite raster fill - the difference is, normal fill consists of discrete lines usually about 5 mils wide that outlines or covers the areas of circuitry that it's isolated from or connected to - raster defines a fill by specifying the outside boundary with clearances defined in a similar fashion which are then subtracted from the fill area.

Hope this makes sense - some older photoplotters will not recognize a raster fill.

Skip

[Roy]

Thanks for the 411, I think the trick was the "Use Fill Mode (G36, G37). G36 and G37 provides a more efficient means of filling closed polygons than stroke fill. That was a close one........ The Genesis software wasn't able to handle a 20MB PHO file, created without those options.