Multisim and Ultiboard

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Scaling printout to work with real printers :-)

If I'm sending a PCB out for fabrication, I just send of the Gerbers, and all is well.

 

In theory, if I'm doing "in house" work, I print the design using my laser printer onto acetate or paper depending on whether I'm using photo-resist or direct toner transfer, and few steps later etch the board.

 

In practice this doesn't work Smiley Mad as while my printer prints a 5000 mil line that run across the page as a line that is 5000 long, when it prints down the page a 10000 mil line prints as 10050 long.

 

Half a percent error doesn't sound dreadful, but we're talking about 1/20" over 10" or rather more than 1mm which in PCB terms is a disaster.

 

Some other PCB software (KiCAD for example) allows you for specify a scaling factor (to six decimal places) for each axis of the printout to correct for such errors, so that you get a printout that is exactly the size of the board, rather than (in this case) over-size in the X dimension.

 

To correct the error on my printer when printing in landscape, I'd want to scale the X axis to 99.5025% (or 0.995025) and the Y axis to 100% (or 1.000000).

 

I've looked through the Ultiboard 10.1 help but failed to find a solution.

 

Please could on of the resident gurus help with this one.

 

Dave

 

 

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Hi Dave

We have replicated this issue and are looking into it. I will keep you posted on the developments.

Regards

Robert 

Regards

Robert

National Instruments UK & Ireland
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Hi Dave

 

I have a work-around, it is to download Viewmate it is free program. This software is a Gerber viewer and it is usually a good idea to see what the board will look as seen by the machine. Viewmate allows the user to print so import the Gerber files into Viewmate and print from there. This has the scaling options that you are looking for.  Scaling the print outs to a greater degree of accuracy has now been raised as a suggestion to R&D (research and development) department.

 

A link to where Viewmate can be downloaded from.

http://www.pentalogix.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=55

 

All the best with your application.

Regards

Robert

National Instruments UK & Ireland
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Robert,

 

Thank you for the suggestion of Viewmate, but I don't think it does have the scaling options I would wish for (I actually looked at it before my original post).  As far as I can tell it only allows one scaling factor to be supplied on printing, whereas I need to supply a scaling factor of 1.000000 for the Y axis and 0.995025 for the X axis at print time (assuming I'm printing in landscape). 

 

I realise that it is possible to import the Gerbers, and then do "Select/Select All" and then "Edit/Edit Selection/Scale" using different scale factors for each axis, but this changes the data, and I'd very much prefer not to change the data, as if I do that I can see many opportunities for error when dealing with several printers.

 

I used DIPTrace in the end as this did what I needed, but I agree it would be nice to have the facility to scale printout in the product, rather than using 3rd party tools (I might find I preferred DIPTrace ...).

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