If you cannot open the PCB file on your computer - there may be several reasons. The first and most important reason (the most common) is the lack of a suitable software that supports PCB among those that are installed on your device. This is used by several design programs. The PCB files in Microsoft PowerPoint usually contain information about its application settings.

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For a PCB beginner, do you know what extension PCB is? If you are going to learn the information of extension PCB, please check and read the content in this passage for professional knowledge.

How to open extension PCB?

If you cannot open the PCB file on your computer - there may be several reasons. The first and most important reason (the most common) is the lack of a suitable software that supports PCB among those that are installed on your device.

A very simple way to solve this problem is to find and download the appropriate application. The first part of the task has already been done – the software supporting the PCB file can be found in the table. Now just download and install the appropriate application.

Install Altium Designer software

The main and most frequent cause precluding users form opening PCB files is that no program that can handle PCB files is installed on user’s system. This one is an easy one. Select Altium Designer or one of the recommended programs (for example, EAGLE, P-CAD, PCB Browser) and download it from appropriate source and install on your system. On the top of the page a list that contains all programs grouped based on operating systems supported can be found. The safest method of downloading Altium Designer installed is by going to developer’s website (Altium Limited.) and downloading the software using provided links.

PCB file in Eagle

Eagle is doubtless one of the popular software packages of an electronics engineer. Eagle is a PCB design software package and has created the contriving process a joyous one. Instantly, a question might come up in your mind concerning opening up a PCB file in Eagle software, is it possible to open up a PCB file in Eagle software? Or can we open Gerber files in Eagle?

Unluckily, the PCB file format is not associated with Eagle software. So, you cannot open up a PCB file with Eagle, but you certainly can apply different software packages to do so. You can open the file with Gerber viewer online free tool. Furthermore, you will find a user script here that can change your file into something like that Eagle can open up.

What are the requirements of PCB drill files?

Again the manufacturers will ask you to submit PCB drill files the following way:

·  Maybe in Excellon format.

·  They should not have “G01”, “G54” and “D” ciphers if opened in a text editor.

·  They should not contain any weird graphical characters, they must have viewable ASCII text.

·  If they are formatted correctly, they will have sizes parted with “T” ciphers.

·  There should be a tool report containing the drill sizes.

·  Give them NC Drill File, or a fab drawing for cutouts and slots.

·  For a plated cutout or slot, you should put the attribute on the drill layer. After that, mention an outer layer pad having a minimum size of cutout or slot you want to be plated.

·  For non-plated cutouts or slots, place them on the outline layer.

How does Gerber extension file work?

So how are Gerber files used in PCB manufacturing? In the subtractive method of PCB manufacture, the PCB starts as a sheet of substrate material encased in copper on one or both sides. Gerber files are used to provide a picture of where the multilayer PCB copper should remain at the end of the process.

The picture is then used to guide the creation of channels to remove copper from the board to leave only the conductive traces used by the actual PCB. The standard convention is to use clear markings for areas with no copper and black markings for the actual copper traces. But it doesn't stop there. Once the copper traces are marked out, layers like the solder mask and silkscreen cover them. The Gerber file will also have pictures for these other layers, representations of locations of the board's drill holes and even a designation of the board's size.

Since Gerber files contain so much info, PCB Houses get up to 9 files - although they're making just a two-layer PCB. Examples include:

• The copper traces for the top of the circuit board

• The copper traces for the underside of the circuit board

• A picture of the solder mask for the top layer

• A picture of the solder mask for the bottom layer

• Silkscreen imaging for the top layer

• Silkscreen imaging for the bottom layer

• The coordinates of all drill holes, as well as their properties

• An outline of the physical board with all the machining operations marked out, such as scoring, slots and internal cutouts

• A simple text README file explaining the uses for all files