gEDA-user: gerber to .dxf converter

[Dave N6NZ]

DJ Delorie wrote:
>> It's common to want to move PCB layouts into cad for chassis layout
>> work.  What would be involved in giving PCB this feature?
> 
> Write an export HID.  It's the same way we export gerber and
> postscript.

.dxf would be very cool... but having been fooling with .dxf lately, i'd 
say it has plenty of gotchas.  bear in mind, i had never looked inside a 
.dxf file as of three weeks ago, so YMMV.  in the mean time, i have 
written a program to extract an interesting subset of a .dxf file and 
convert it to instructions to drive an Epilog laser cutter. (enough to 
cut table top robot chassis from 3mm acrylic)

the problem is that .dxf has a pretty ad-hoc structure.  pulling out 
pieces that you are interested in is not too hard.  reading the whole 
thing and making sense of it is hard.  writing a .dxf file that lots of 
different .dxf readers will interpret correctly is hard.

QCAD has a GPL'ed dxf i/o library for C++.  i'll probably end up 
re-writing my laser cutter convert to use that library. (another library 
choice is DIME.) even with the library, writing a correctly structured 
.dxf file is hard.

don't let me discourage you... i'd love to have .dxf export :) just 
don't expect to complete it in a weekend.

for my purposes, it sounds like running off the eps sounds sufficient.

-dave