Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: ODBC Updated - DDBs now won't open!!!

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <marjan@vom.com>]

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At 04:46 PM 9/11/00 +1000, Linden Doyle wrote:

>The original problem that precipitated all this soft surgery still 
>remains. When generating the Gerbers for the PCB in question Protel spits 
>out the error message:
>
>         Design Explorer Error
>         [Microsoft][ODBC Microdoft Access 97 Driver] Too few parameters. 
> Expected 30.

Ah, the plot thickens. [Is that what happens when we accidentally assign a 
50 mil aperture to our 8 mil traces?]

I think this is a known problem. The fix is getting the latest ODBC drivers 
from Microsoft.

>Upon loding the files in Camtastic (the freebie) I get 6 error messages - 
>Invalid 0-Radius Arc.
>These arcs appear to be on the overlay layers: 1 on the Bottom; 5 on the Top
>While coords are given they are invisible and cannot be selected or deleted.

I'd want to track that down. I'd search the Protel ASCII database for 
primitives with the coordinates of the error (assuming that one has not 
done something foolish like centering the gerbers -- which I think is the 
default). Another way to look for the nasty little critter would be to 
export the PCB arcs to a spreadsheet and look for radius zero.

It is normal for arcs to be found only on the silkscreen (overlay) layers, 
unless one is using arc routing or has arcs in the board outline. I'd 
suspect that there is a zero radius arc in a footprint. I don't recall, but 
such an arc might not display.

One way to get rid of such problems in the plot file would be to set 
software arcs (or unset hardware arcs, I forget which it is) in the gerber 
options. This will cause a series of straight segments approximating the 
arc to be plotted instead of using the gerber arc command.

marjan@vom.com
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433



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