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The gerber conversion doesn't seem to work for me.
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Thanks for sending the sample gerber file, as it greatly clears up what you're after (regarding the gerber to dxf conversion). ACE provides many different options when exporting to DXF/DWG. The reason for so many different output options is that DXF/DWG is probably the most widely used CAD transfer format and each engineer may have different requirements for how their DXF/DWG entities should appear.
In your case, since your gerber file contains "hatches" to fill metal areas, I assume you'd just like to have the outside boundaries (with all the hatches removed), so I'd recommend the following:
1. Import Gerber and select DWG as your export format, and press next.
2. Verify the import and export options, and press next to load the gerber file into ACE.
3. Press the button "CAD Viewer" which displays your gerber file in the ACE Viewer/Editor; and use the feature "Merge Overlapping Objects..." located in the Tools Menu.
Note: What "Merge Overlapping objects" does is calculate the boundary of each filled object, and just generate the outlines.
Note: Another nice feature of ACE is called "Output Arcs" which is located in the DXF/DWG export options. What it will do is detect if an "arc" can be outputted instead of a group of line segments. This will produce more smaller and higher quality DXF/DWG files, however it is important to take notice of the "Output Arc Tolerance" used to controls the accuracy limit for the arc detection algorithm.
View the following movie tutorial for more reference:
http://www.screencast.com/users/Numerical/folders/Jing/media/97988812-6f7e-47a2-8c60-bc02fdb09fd9
Please let us know your thoughts and if you have any other questions or comments.
In your case, since your gerber file contains "hatches" to fill metal areas, I assume you'd just like to have the outside boundaries (with all the hatches removed), so I'd recommend the following:
1. Import Gerber and select DWG as your export format, and press next.
2. Verify the import and export options, and press next to load the gerber file into ACE.
3. Press the button "CAD Viewer" which displays your gerber file in the ACE Viewer/Editor; and use the feature "Merge Overlapping Objects..." located in the Tools Menu.
Note: What "Merge Overlapping objects" does is calculate the boundary of each filled object, and just generate the outlines.
Note: Another nice feature of ACE is called "Output Arcs" which is located in the DXF/DWG export options. What it will do is detect if an "arc" can be outputted instead of a group of line segments. This will produce more smaller and higher quality DXF/DWG files, however it is important to take notice of the "Output Arc Tolerance" used to controls the accuracy limit for the arc detection algorithm.
View the following movie tutorial for more reference:
http://www.screencast.com/users/Numerical/folders/Jing/media/97988812-6f7e-47a2-8c60-bc02fdb09fd9
Please let us know your thoughts and if you have any other questions or comments.
Numerical Support Team