Fancy silkscreen fonts/images

Community PCB Design
1

Can eagle do “fancy” fonts like the LiliPad Arduino board title? How about importing a vector graphic?

I’d like to really personalize my board with different fonts and a custom image on the silkscreen if possible.

2

I don’t believe there’s any way to directly add a ‘fancy font’ to the PCB (ie. no way to type in ‘Toast’ and have a calligraphic ‘Toast’ slapped on the board).

There are ULPs to import graphics, although I’ve found these to be a bit sloppy. If I need a logo or graphic on my board, what I’ll do is import it from a BMP file (using import-bmp.ulp, I believe it is), then clean it up by hand (outlines, filled polygons, etc.). It’s probably not the most efficient way, but it works for those of us who don’t know any better.

Here’s a bad example from a long time ago:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y30/an … aphics.jpg

3

We use import-bmp, but use a large image, and a small pixel size - which yields good results.

Cheers,

–David Carne

4

Thanks for the info. This works really great. Here is what I did:

For special fonts:

  • - Use your favorite graphic program to make a 2 color BMP image that is about 3000x2000.
  • - Select your font and make it size 175 pixels. Use black for the color.
  • - Place your text anywhere in the image.
  • - Save your image.
  • - In eagle, click the ULP icon below the menu bar on the board window. select "import-bmp.ulp"
  • - Find your BMP image and select it
  • - Select only the black color in the color selector.
  • - Select 0.5 as the scale factor. Make layer 21 the start layer.
  • - Eagle will process your BMP and place in on your board.
  • - Use the group tool to draw a box around all your new text.
  • - Now place and rotate your text to your hearts content.
    • 5

    It is good to put logo on the solder mask. Cool.