If you get that, you can move on to the next step.Ģ) I start by opening EagleCad and Selecting File/New/Board… This gives me a blank canvas to create the outline on. If the conversion is successful you should see the number of lines, arcs, circles, converted along with a Complete message. Once you have the setup complete click the Convert button on the left. For much of the file it’ll be an outline – and most people recommend you leave the outline as a “hairline” so the fab house doesn’t “charge” you for the additional 8mil width of the outline. I leave the line with at 1mil because I can change the width in eaglecad based upon whatever I’m trying to accomplish.
At this point I basically leave everything else at defaults of 1mil (0.001 inches) line widths and no offset. Make sure you match the units in which you created the DXF file. The SCR file is used later to “draw” on a blank PCB canvas. Start by opening the tool and selecting the input DXF file and the output. Once you have the CAD (DXF) file you can proceed to covert the file using the DXF2SCR tool. This allows your PCB to be “exact” without having to move holes, lines, or arcs in EagleCad. Make sure you put in any mounting holes you want … and maybe even some documentation layers like a center line or critical component locations.
Teaching QCAD is beyond the scope of this document but the basic principle is that you want to create the outline of the PCB in CAD via a series of curves or lines.
The author uses the Free GPLed version of QCAD to create DXF files. Please click the pictures below to be taken to a higher rez screen capture/picture.ġ) The toughest part of this tutorial is creating the CAD file (DXF) which will serve as an input to the DXF2SCR tool. About 10 minutes to do your first PCB outline.
ZIP file containing files used in this Tutorial.