How to design a simple PCB

We are going to make a gerber file, if the number of people who loved your gerber design is the highest then we will finally fabricate it to PCB boards.

1. Material

1) Prepare a picture, format: *.bmp; color: only black and white
This picture will be the front side of the PCB board, you can mark your name in the picture too. (*please note the Copyright issue.)
2) Draw a outline picture of the PCB board, format *.bmp. If you know how to draw it in eagle then you don’t need to draw this picture.
3) If you have not install eagle, please install eagle too

2. Gerber file

For PCB specificaiton, please refer to below link:
http://support.seeedstudio.com/knowledgebase/articles/447362-fusion-pcb-specification
Gerber sample:

PCB board sample:

Now let’s begin make a gerber file
1. Creat a new board file
Open eagle, then click File > New > Board

2. Import the outline picture then change it’s layer information
①Click “ULP”, Open “import-bmp.ulp” fil

②Click “OK”

③Open the outline picture first

④Choose the color you want to keep of the design.

⑤Scale the picture dimension to the real PCB dimension. Then click “OK”, then wait…

⑥Run script

⑦delete the unwanted words or lines
Move figure: Press the center button of the mouse to move the figure
-Click ‘delete ”, then “group” ” the line and words you don’t need.

-Right click the mouse and choose “delete group”.

The final outline figure will be like below.

⑧Change the layer information of the outline
-Group the outline figure and click “change ”, choose “layer”

– select layer 20 (Dimension), Click “OK”

-Right click the mouse then choose ‘change group”

-Check have you alrady change the layer
Group the outline figure, right click the mouse, choose “Properties”

The layer information should be 20 dimension. Click “OK”

3. Then import the front and back layer in the same way.

*Note:
①Front layer should change to layer 29 tStop; Back layer should change to layer 30 bStop

②The back layer need to do Mirror, or after made to PCB board the words will be inverse.
– click “mirror ”, group the back layer, right click the mouse and change mirror.

-After mirror the back layer, it should be like below.

4. Save the eagle file, then you got a “*.brd” file.

Use a new folder to put the brd file, later the gerber file will exported to this folder too.

5. Export it to a gerber file.

You can generate your Gerber file as per following link:
http://support.seeedstudio.com/knowledgebase/articles/1176532-how-to-generate-gerber-file

After all is OK, send your gerber to us.
Please go ahend to our website to make your boards:
https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion_pcb.html

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