Numerical Innovations - Help Center

I need to convert from DXF to Gerber and I can seem to get the Polygon De-Embedding feature to work. There appears to be missing boundaries in my gerber files. I have sent support the DXF file for their review.

Thanks for sending your DXF file.  The boundaries that are missing (in your gerber) were "OPEN" Polylines in DXF.  If you load your DXF file inside AutoCAD and list those boundieries will state an "open polyline".  In order for ACE to create & de-embed a polygonr requires a DXF file with "CLOSED" polyline boundaries without any overlaps (this is also requirement of the gerber format or else the polygons will not plot correctly).

Here's a read-out from AutoCAD after I select the boundary that is not appearing correctly:

POLYLINE  Layer: "0"
                            Space: Model space
                   Color: 7 (white)    Linetype: "BYLAYER"
                   Handle = 10ec
              Open
    starting width    0.0000
      ending width    0.0000
              area   24.0635
            length  257.2910

                  VERTEX    Layer: "CIRCUITS"
                            Space: Model space
                   Color: 1 (red)    Linetype: "BYLAYER"
                   Handle = 10ed
                at point, X=  35.8990  Y=  34.0055  Z=   0.0000
    starting width    0.0000
      ending width    0.0000
...

There are several different ways to attack this conversion problem:

1. You will need to fix & repair the outer boundary in AutoCAD (or another CAD program) and make sure it is a "Closed" polyline with no duplicate vertex points or self intersections.

2.  As I mentioned before I used to do this kind of conversion work all the time, and I would start AutoCAD, slicing the polyline boundaries (using trim), joining them (using AutoCAD command PEDIT), and then making them overlap each other (by using stretch).  This way you don't need to use de-embedding and conversion converts in a snap.

3. In a CAD program, explode all your boundaries to simple lines & arcs.  Then let ACE perform the conversion, just make sure to check the DXF layer option "Join" during DXF import.