topic Re: Excellon CAM broken? in EAGLE Forum (Read-Only)

Excellon CAM broken?

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 18:27:35 GMT

Eagle 7.6. I'm trying to generate an Excellon .drd, but it complains that no signal layers are active. When I turn on one or both of my signal layers, it says "More than 1 signal layers active." See attached.

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

AutodeskEagleCad — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 19:57:23 GMT

Eagle is on v9.x

How about updating and then see how things work?

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 22:09:32 GMT

Thanks, but update what, and how? I'm happy with Eagle 7.6 and I can't afford the new version. Is there a way to update the Excellon driver or something?

...Larry

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

AutodeskEagleCad — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 22:16:14 GMT

The software is free. It only costs money if you need the professional unlimited license.

https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/free-download

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

one-of-the-robs — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 09:11:14 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

Eagle 7.6. I'm trying to generate an Excellon .drd, but it complains that no signal layers are active. When I turn on one or both of my signal layers, it says "More than 1 signal layers active." See attached.

Your screenshot is too fuzzy (low resolution) to make out anything useful in it.

Have you followed the instructions properly? If you load the standard "excellon" job, you will have the "Device" set to "EXCELLON" and only layers 44 (Drills) and 45 (Holes) selected. This is the correct configuration.

In your screenshot you have layers 1, 16, 17 & 18 selected. This is wrong for a drill file as none of these contain drills. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I can't read what device you have.

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 14:05:06 GMT

>Have you followed the instructions properly? If you load the standard
"excellon" job, you will have the "Device" set to "EXCELLON" and only
layers 44 (Drills) and 45 (Holes) selected. This is the correct
configuration.

In your screenshot you have layers 1, 16, 17 & 18 selected. This is
wrong for a drill file as none of these contain drills. Unfortunately,
as I mentioned above, I can't read what device you have.

The device is EXCELLON, it correctly says File: %N.drd. Without 1, 16,
17, 18 selected, it says "CAM job doesn't cover the layer setup. Missing
layers: 1, 16" Then when I add them, it says "More than 1 signal layer
active!" or "Pads and vias should be active!" "Missing layer 16!" etc.
An old used-to-work board has the same problem.

EXCELLON_24 etc files, same problem.

...Larry

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

AutodeskEagleCad — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 15:10:11 GMT

Larry:

I suggest you learn how to create, manipulate and save CAM Processor files. It is well worth the time it takes. There are many videos in the public domain which can help you though it. It's not hard at all.

And I strongly suggest you do so on the latest version of Eagle.

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 15:27:06 GMT

The Excellon CAM file is in German. The Excellon driver fails on my
desktop and my laptop, I imagine it broke when I updated to 7.6. I bet
if I learned German and mastered CAM processor file repair, I would then
(six months later) find that the problem was not in the CAM file but in
7.6. The free version doesn't work (too many schematic sheets), so this
would cost $100/year plus the effort to get it downloaded and working.

Got any other ideas?

...Larry

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

AutodeskEagleCad — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 15:37:50 GMT

I do not have any other ideas.

$100/ year sounds cheap. I pay $65/ month.

I'm not confident you're going to find someone who can support a v7.x in German but good luck with that.

I started using Eagle at v8.4.

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 16:57:06 GMT

I may have a solution: oshpark.com accepts Eagle .brd files, dirt cheap,
very nice software so you can look at all the layers of the final board.

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

AutodeskEagleCad — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:06:47 GMT

Gerv.exe is free and does a fine job showing you your Gerbers.

I'm sure there's better out there, but this is free and does the job.

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

one-of-the-robs — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 09:37:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
The Excellon CAM file is in German.

The default file has both English and German. Which you get presented depends on your PC's region settings.

@Anonymous wrote:
The Excellon driver fails on my
desktop and my laptop, I imagine it broke when I updated to 7.6. I bet
if I learned German and mastered CAM processor file repair, I would then
(six months later) find that the problem was not in the CAM file but in
7.6.

I find that unlikely. I don't have 7.6 here but I can assure you the excellon CAM job works fine in 7.7

Incidentally, if you can find a copy of 7.7 somewhere (I believe it is still available but don't recall the URL right now) then I would recommend updating to that. Your existing license will carry over.

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

didrik.madheden — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 10:27:49 GMT

Firstly, the low quality screenshot is due to Autodesk's forum software, which for whatever reason makes a preview with that poor quality. If you click the download button next to the attachment, and view the downloaded file, the image is legible.

According to this thread from when Element 14 still owned Eagle, the original error "CAM job doesn't cover the layer setup. Missing layers: 1, 16" is a due to a bug in 7.6 and is just a warning that is harmless. You could safely ignore it according to the linked forum discussion, or upgrade/downgrade to a different version Eagle covered by your license to get rid of it.

And again, as @one-of-the-robs correctly pointed out, the appropriate layer selection is 44 (drills) and 45 (holes) and nothing else. (This is what the example file excellon.cam does by default.)

Re: Excellon CAM broken?

didrik.madheden — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 08:13:09 GMT

Just found out something else. In a thread discussing the availability of 32-bit versions of Eagle, I found this post by Jose Garcia who's an Autodesk rep. They're still, though semi-hidden it seems, making the last pre-Autodesk version of Eagle available for download. If you don't want to go to seedy backwater sites, try these links. If your license is valid, it should work for this version which will get rid of the warning message.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/eagle-32-bit/m-p/6850351#M726

Alternative download location, also officially endorsed:

http://eagle.autodesk.com/eagle/software-versions/1