gerber-to-svg

gerber to svg

Render Gerber and NC drill files as SVGs in Node and the browser

gerber-to-svg is a library and CLI tool for converting Gerber and NC drill files (manufacturing files for printed circuit boards) into SVG files for the web.

install

npm install --save gerber-to-svg
// or
yarn add gerber-to-svg

example

After you clone and set-up the repository as detailed in development setup, you can run gerber-to-svg's example script to render all the layers of an Arduino Uno PCB.

cd tracespace/packages/gerber-to-svg
yarn run example

Arduino Uno design files used here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

usage

var gerberToSvg = require('gerber-to-svg')
var converter = gerberToSvg(input, options, [callback])

See the API documentation for full details.

command line

gerber-to-svg also ships with a command-line utility.

1. npm install -g gerber-to-svg or yarn global add gerber-to-svg
2. gerber-to-svg [options] -- gerber_files

options

switch	description	type
-o, --out	output directory	string
-q, --quiet	do not print warnings and messages	boolean
-p, --pretty	pretty print output	boolean, tab-size
-a, --attr	SVG attributes (e.g. --attr.color=blue)	{[string]: string}
-e, --append-ext	append, rather than replace, .svg extension	boolean
-f, --format	coordinate decimal places format	"$int,$dec"
-z, --zero	override zero suppression	"L", "T"
-u, --units	set backup units to	"mm", "in"
-n, --notation	set backup absolute/incremental notation	"A", "I"
-t, --optimize-paths	optimize and deduplicate paths	boolean
-b, --plot-as-outline	optimize paths and fill gaps	boolean, max-gap
-v, --version	display version information	boolean
-h, --help	display this help text	boolean

examples:

• gerber-to-svg gerber.gbr - convert gerber.gbr and output to stdout
• gerber-to-svg -o out gerber.gbr - convert and output to out/gerber.svg
• gerber-to-svg -o out -a gerber.gbr - output to out/gerber.gbr.svg

background

Since Gerber is a vector image format, this library takes in a Gerber file and spits it out in a different vector format: SVG. This converter uses RS-274X and strives to be true to the latest format specification.

Everywhere that is "dark" or "exposed" in the Gerber (think a copper trace or a line on the silkscreen) will be currentColor in the SVG. You can set this with the color CSS property or the color attribute in the SVG node itself.

Everywhere that is "clear" (anywhere that was never drawn on or was drawn on but cleared later) will be transparent. This is accomplished though judicious use of SVG masks and groups.

The bounding box is carefully calculated as the file is being converted, so the width and height of the resulting SVG should be nearly (if not exactly) the real world size of the Gerber image. The SVG's viewBox is in 1000x Gerber units, so its min-x and min-y values can be used to align SVGs generated from different board layers.

Excellon / NC drill files do not have a completely clearly defined spec, so drill file parsing is lenient in its attempt to generate an image. It should auto-detect when a drill file has been entered. You may need to override parsing settings (see API.md) to get drill files to render properly if they do not adhere to certain assumptions. The library must make these assumptions because Excellon does not define commands for certain formatting decisions.