If gerber files that are being imported using either the normal or the intelligent import function get into the regions of a few hundred K in size, the whole import phase gradually gets slower and slower and can sometimes take half an hour to complete.... is there a problem here ? Also I did get a silk screen gerber from a manufactur that was about 8MB and it took me one hour to import it !.... also once imported I really could use it as it had become 26MB in size and was impossible to manipulate on screen.
Also on the intelligent import I notice that a lot of tracks become dangling and a lot of extra nets are needlessly generated as some tracks that connect to vias then go onto another track, all get named seperately instead of the same. Could there not be a "tidy up" tool that could be run it remove anomolies like this ??
Because of the way the connectivity rebuliding function works, there's a square law relationship between size and import time. We're aware of the problem this causes with large files, and are looking at ways to improve the efficiency with them.
The problem with silk screens is that every segment of every character is another line to be imported - and by the nature of silk screens, there are a lot of them! That's where the huge file sizes come from.
Once imported, it's possible to replace the complex shapes which look like text with real text. If you're rebuilding components, that can happen automatically. That will reduce your file size and speed things up dramatically.
I understand this now Peter, there was "writing" in copper on in the gerber import and as you say this was made up of 1 thou lines.
On the other point however, on dangling tracks where track segments are issigned different net names although they are all part of the same track..... is it possible to have a "tidy up" utility ?
The net names/dangling tracks issue isn't a known problem. I'm wondering if there's something odd about the way this file has imported on your machine. Would it be possible to take a look at an example of this.
Gerber Import very slow !
Posted - 04 Apr 2009 : 10:18:40
