> On Feb 20, 2017, at 06:24, Holm Tiffe <h...@freibergnet.de> wrote:
> 
> Why is that nice? This way the pcb company has your "sourcecode".
> Besides of that where is the real difference to going to
> "File->Plot", Select "Gerber" and push the "Plot" Button?
> 
> That can't really be to difficult...

In every PCB tool I've used, Gerber generation is a separate, configurable 
process which can easily be misconfigured. Visually checking my Gerbers for 
common mistakes is a normal part of my flow, no matter what tool I use, even 
after I have the settings dialed in. Yes, I usually just click "plot" as you 
say, but I still proof the plots for mistakes that can creep in, such as 
designing a board with more layers than I had previously used in that 
particular tool installation, and forgetting to emit the Gerbers for the added 
layers.

Back when I had to review a lot of customer PCB designs as an applications 
engineer for a chip manufacturer, I'd regularly get Gerbers from professional 
designers which required post-processing such as changing drill scaling and 
offset before I could even view them, and that taught me to be a lot more 
careful about my own Gerber generation. I suspect that full-service PCB houses 
would just quietly fix problems like that and only raise flags for serious 
errors, so many designers probably never got any feedback about their Gerbers 
being messy. But no-touch quick-turn shops require pretty clean Gerbers, so 
skipping Gerber generation lowers the bar for inexperienced PCB designers.

I don't personally send in PCB source files instead of Gerbers, but I can see 
how being able to do that can be helpful and convenient for beginners.


-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <n...@nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/

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