Altium assistance

Archive BatchPCB
1

I submitted a design, and I’m worried about the drill drawing.

Altium 9 generates Gerber drill drawings with GD1 and GG1 file names, neither of which BatchPCB will accept. If I generate an “NC drill file” named DRL, when I upload it to BatchPCB, I get a “You have not selected a drill file” message. If I click Continue, the board does pass the Design Check. Is everything OK or am I going to run into problems later? The confirmation email didn’t include any kind of drill drawing attachment.

I only do this every couple of years, so I forget…

2

jimg:
I submitted a design, and I’m worried about the drill drawing.

Altium 9 generates Gerber drill drawings with GD1 and GG1 file names, neither of which BatchPCB will accept. If I generate an “NC drill file” named DRL, when I upload it to BatchPCB, I get a “You have not selected a drill file” message. If I click Continue, the board does pass the Design Check. Is everything OK or am I going to run into problems later? The confirmation email didn’t include any kind of drill drawing attachment.

I only do this every couple of years, so I forget…

If you don’t submit a drill file, I think you’re going to get a board with no holes drilled in it. I would like to know the solution to this problem as well, since BatchPCB doesn’t recognize my NC Drill files from Altium 10 either.

Edit: Figured it out. The .DRL file that Altium generates is a binary file, while BatchPCB expects an ASCII drill file. Luckily Altium also generates this! For me it comes out with a .txt extension. Just rename it to .drl or .drill and BatchPCB should pick it up.

3

Well, I guess I’ll find out in a week or so.

4

This this…

[[ Gerber Files ]]

[General: Inches, 2:5]

[Layers: GTO, GTP, GTS, GTL, GBO, GBP, GBS, GBL]

[Drill Drawing: -nothing- ]

[Apertures: Embbed (RS274X) ]

[Advanced: don’t care/default ] (sorted by person paneling)

The GD1 and GG1 files are Drill Drawing and Drill Guides - NOT drill hits.

It generated these because you checked the boxes in the “Drill Drawing” tab in the “Gerber Files” output.

There will be a .TXT in your NC Drill outputs.

It’s the actual drill hit file you need to send… I’ve uploaded with the .txt extension and it seems to recognize it just fine.

5

jimg, has the advice from indes helped you? I have to perform the same operation but I’m a noob so I won’t dare to do it myself…

6

If the Altium users here are in need of more assistance, I’d be willing to take some photos/screenshots or send along pieces of the Altium project if it helps (i.e. output jobs you can import or a whole project to get the gist).

Every standard component package in the world is already built in - With some practice, you can bang out a board in altium from schematic in about 30-60 minutes, have a 3D model generated, gerbers, and even bill of material lists showing all your part numbers, prices exported right to Excel to give you a total cost.

(I’ve started projects on a Monday and had a fab’d board from China in my hand the following Monday)

I also recommend using gerbv to check the output - just ensure the holes line up with the pads.

Its both a hobby and a job for me - and this software is some of the best packages I’ve ever used.

7

Altium does spit out the correct drill files. one is named .txt though hehe

iv used Altium with batchPCB many times and never had any issues :slight_smile: