ASM 500W Family Revision HistoryThis document summarizes enhancements and fixes to the ASM 500 Windows family of DXF to Gerber Translators. Please consult this page on a regular basis to determine what changes have been made to our programs. This revision history covers:
Version 7.01b 64 bit (12-02-2024)Fix Licensing IssuesThe new release takes care of the following issues: Version 7.01a 64 bit (6-20-2024)New ASM500, ASM501, ASM502 Ver7.01a 64 bit VS2015 with TTF supportThis new release covers ASM500, ASM501, and ASM502. All the features listed below for the ASM500 7.00 release are now available with ASM501 and ASM502. Version 7.00 64 bit (3-5-2024)New ASM500 Ver7.00 64 bit VS2015This new release includes the following upgrades: New GBR2DXF Ver7.00 64 bit VS2015 The new Gerber to DXF includes the following upgrades: New GBRMERGE 1.13 and GBRVU 3.59 64 bit VS2015 The new GBRMERGE includes the following upgrades: The new GBRVU includes the following upgrades: Version 6.69a (12-4-2014)New InstallThis release is with the latest installer. Windows 8 supportAdded support to Windows 8, 32 and 64 bit. Version 6.63 (5-20-2010)Tapered plineThe DXF engine had a bug handling tapered plines. This has been fixed. Windows 7 supportAdded support to Windows 7, 32 and 64 bit. Version 6.62a (12-28-2009)GBR2DXF UpdateA new feature was added in GBR2DXF. The new feature can be set in the Setting menu and it allows the user to create 0 width LINE/ARC entity for Gerber draws and a POINT for a Gerber flash. Version 6.62 (11-30-2009)Illegal bow tie polygon droppedASM500 dropped an illegal polygon drawn as a bow tie. This has been fixed. Rotated extruded block translated incorrectlyASM500 converted incorrectly a block which was extruded along the Z axis and rotated. This has been fixed. Issue with small arcsThe issue was related to the presence of very short poly arcs. Problem reported by Dynatron and is now fixed. Version 6.58 (7-24-2009)Issue with small arcsThe issue was related to the presence of very short arcs, which when converted to GERBER in CIRCULAR mode became 360 arcs (the starting and ending points collapsing to the same point). This problem wasnot a problem when not in CIRCULAR mode, so now every DXF ARC is first checked as if it were not in CIRCULAR mode. If the number of points to create the corresponding segmented ARC is less than 2, the ARC is discarded. Version 6.57 (6-21-2009)Improved LinkerImproved linker as a result of Physware complaint that some very poorly
constructed data (mulitple lines and arcs showing up at the same point)
did not link the way they liked. Version 6.55b (5-14-2009)Incorrect arc Gerber dataThis version fixes a follow up issue to version 6.55a - it also had to do with circular data. Version 6.55a (5-12-2009)Incorrect arc Gerber data for block with different XY scaleThis version fixes a problem related to blocks that have different X and Y scale. Arc data cannot be output via G02, G03 and IJ commands because there is no elliptical GERBER draw. This problem was fixed. Version 6.55 (5-9-2009)De-embedding engine crashThis version fixes a problem related to PATH to OUTLINE conversions when the last segment overlaps the first segment of the POLYLINE or LWPOLYLINE. The two reports were symptomatic of the same problem. Although the problem still resides in BoolDll.Dll this problem was "fixed" in the DXF front end when constructing the outline data for the POLYLINE. Version 6.54 (2-2-2009)Fixed problem with UNIFONT SHX filesThis version fixes the SHX problem reported for the character "C" in romans_p.shx and romans_2009.shx. This fix applies to UNIFONT SHX files that have character entries with preambles longer than two bytes long. Normally the preamble would be "C\0", but in the problem SHX files some of these preambles were much longer, for example "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C\0" Reported by Dynatron. Wrong dcode selection in Outline mode with non POEX aperturesThis version fixes a problem in the outline dcode selection when CIRCULAR is on and the outline dcodes were not POEX. Reported by Crane Polyflon. Version 6.53 (11-21-2008)Block names with non-printing charactersThe DXF engine failed to process block names with non-printing characters. Reported by Dynatron. Empty Gerber file in De-embeddingASM500 with De-embedding created empty Gerber files with certain DXF files which were not purged. This has been fixed. Reported by Tyco. Version 6.45a (10-4-2007)Object folded on itselfThe DXF engine didn't report as an error a polygon that had a 0.01 micron segment folded on itself within a close pline. The problem was reported by Advance Reproduction and was fixed. Ellipse problem.The DXF engine didn't support ellipse entities in some cases. Problem reported by CTS Corp and was fixed. Long block and layer names.The DXF engine now supports block and layer names that are longer than 32 characters. Updated rs274.dll.An updated rs274.dll (274x formatter) for Gbrmerge fix was provided. M-Codes were being placed at the end of a Gerber file without an End of Block character, '*'. When files were being merged later, an M-Code sometimes appeared in the middle of a merge file. This has now been fixed. Version 6.41 (3-5-2007)USB Key supportAdded support for USB keys. Version 6.36 (1-29-2006)Spaces in fontsThese versions fix the issue of spacing in TEXT in the presence of secondary fonts that contain the space character in their stroke table. Version 6.35 (1-12-2006)Support for isocp*.shx fontsThis version fixes a translator problem with the fonts isocp*.shx. Long Directory name problemA problem was fixed when the working directory was long and had spaces in it. Version 6.33 (10-27-2005)Support for 256 layersPrevious version of ASM50x didn't support files with more than 256 layers.This has been fixed. Big font supportThere were two conversions issues with big fonts (far east fonts). This has been fixed. File MergeThere was a bug in the film merge when the layers merged had similar names. This has been fixed. Working directory passed to GBRVUASM50x working directory didn't pass to GBRVU. That resulted in drill files going to the wrong place. This has been fixed. GBR2DXF crashesGBR2DXF crashed when the aperture table had the DEMB key word. This has been fixed. Version 6.32 (7-29-2005)Multi Aperture file in ASM502 problem0 width closed plines with arcs didn't get fill with ASM502 using the multi aperture fill mode. This has been fixed. Film Merge ProblemA bug in the shell caused bad films to be generated when circular data was used. This has been fixed. Version 6.31 (7-11-2005)Block data appeared twice in output Gerber fileBlock data in the DXF file was converted to gerber and written twice in the Gerber file. This has been fixed. Version 6.30 (6-30-2005)Flash disappear in ASM500 with De-embeddingWhen de-embedding was on, flashes disappeared in ASM500. This has been fixed. Arcs to vectors in POEX mode.When de-embedding is off, arcs that are part of a 0 width closed pline, get chopped to vectors. It is now fixed. Problem with file with over 10000 blocks.ASM50x crashed when scanning a file with over 10000 blocks. It is now fixed. Version 6.27 (2-11-2005)Artwork Adds Polygon De-Embedding to ASM 500Polygon de-embedding is the ability to take a layer full of polygons that contains other
polygons, figure out which surrounds which, and produce a Gerber output that sorts out the
changes in polarity due to each boundary.
This function is of great interest to designers of MEMs, Microwave and RF circuits,
chemically milled parts and optical components; and to the photo mask manufacturers
who must deal with such data. Program would not be able to create a job file under Windows 2000. It is now fixed. Version 6.26 (12-4-2004)Working DirectoryForce working directory to be the same as the job file when passed as an argument. 360 degree pline arcFixed a problem of calculating the radius when translating 360 degree 0 width closed pline arc. Version 6.25 (11-8-2004)Filling using Multi Aperture fillProblem fixed with the multi aperture filling of polygons with arcs and re-entrant polygons. Version 6.23 (06-28-2004)Added support for Big FontOur ASM50X family support now big fonts - that allows us to converts SHX files of different languages like Japanese and Chinese. Fixed Arc Problem in circular modeASM50x had problems converting certain arcs in circular mode. This has been fixed. Version 6.06a (11-11-2003)Fixed Install Bug for Hardware KeyThe installation programs would terminate early if hardware key (Sentinel) licensing was selected. This has been fixed. Date FixASM50x license modules would not support dates after 2010. This had been fixed. Version 6.06 (10-11-2003)Fixed Circular 360 bugA bug with the circular interpolation was fixed in this version. Version 6.05 (09-22-2003)Flexlm Licensing AddedThis version includes support for Flexlm node locking and Flexlm floating license manager ... Known Bug - Circular 360A bug with the circular interpolation was found after release. If circular interpolation is set to On 360 the resulting arcs may be incorrect. Users are advised to turn circular interpolation off until the next release when this bug will be corrected. Version 6.04 (3-11-2002)DXF to Gerber - New Polygon "Chopping" Function Version 6.04 can now handle such complex boundaries automatically. It breaks down these large complex boundaries into smaller ones that do not exceed the max vertex limit....
Version 6.02 (12-05-2001)Float 0
Polylines with Width Version 6.00 (10-12-2001)Film Output File Names
View RS274X Film Output
View Gerber - Gbrvu Hidden New HostInfo Node Locking Demo Mode is Gone GBR2DXF Updates Clipping Windows for Custom Apertures was Deficient
Custom Aperture In a SR Layer Undefined or Duplicate Block Definition in the DXF Output Fixed SR handling Problem New keying/hostinfo 2. Version 5.66 (4-20-1999)
Bulges when Filling
Version 5.65 (4-12-1999)
Flash Donuts
New Filling Routine
%%c Special Character
Crash after "Analyzing Entities"
Version 5.61 (08-24-1998)
Lavenir Output
DXF Layer Names with Spaces
Flashing Circles Smaller than 0.001
Compound Text (MTEXT) Crash
Text Shifted
Version 5.60 (06-09-1998)
Y2K Compliant
New Improved CD/WEB Installation
Long File Names Support
RS274X, MDA and Film Merge Demo Mode
Auxiliary Aperture
Flash Blocks
Flash Block Rotation
rotating a rectangular d-code is OK for 180 but not for 90 etc.... rotating a square d-code is OK for any 90 degree rotation.
Version 5.51 (04-21-1998)
Update Floating License Manager
Fixed Arc Bug
Version 5.50 (01-08-1998)
Merge Output CR/LF
Fixed Bug when merging to RS274X and MDA
Polylines POEX Not Filled
Total Number of Closed Polygons Output
DXF Scanning Error Bug Fix
Version 5.49 (07-22-1997)
POEX POIN Filling ErrorIn the previous version POEX POIN filling sometimes generated a precision error that figures might not be closed. This has been fixed.PCL Plotter DriverPCL Unencoded Plotter Driver has been deleted from this version.Version 5.47 (7-10-1997)Auto Flash (Circles/Donuts) Insertion PointA bug was introduced in version 5.14 that placed flashes in the wrong position when the flashes were inside a block. This has been fixed. Problem reported by Joost from Holland on 7-8-97. Warns when filling a block inserted with scaleWhen using ASM 500's and ASM 502's area fill option (fill=on) one is not allowed to insert blocks with scale greater than 1 or the fill is not correct. This version puts a warning in the log file if it encounters such block insertions. Requested by Mike Domalewski of Texas Instruments on 7-7-97. Version 5.46 (07-01-1997)Text AlignmentASM 50x 5.45 had the text alignment problem fixed, but still generated shifted text output under some conditions. This has been fixed. Version 5.45 (06-26-1997)
Single and Zero Vertex Count PolylineAutoCAD exports DXF files with single and Zero Vertex Count Polylines under some conditions. Asm50x used to drop the data after the single vertex polyline, this version would skip the invalid single vertex data and translate the rest correctly.
Compensation with Precision finer than 0.001Older versions generate output a little off when compensating data smaller than 0.001 inch. This has been fixed.UM to INCH/MM ConversionThis version supports DXF unit UM to gerber INCH or MM. It used to treat DXF UM as MIL.Check if DXF File is really a DXF fileThe translation engine now checks to determine whether the input file is really a DXF file based on the first couple of characters which must be either white spaces, zeroes, or 999 with or without zeroes after it. Otherwise, an error message pops up and translation terminates.Text AlignmentWhen a DXF file is exported by programs other than AutoCAD, the text in the DXF output might not have alignment information, which causes Asm50x to translate the text using the alignment point for rotation and text generation information and relative text scaling.Lightweight Polyline from AutoCAD R14This new construct from R14 is supported. Other R14 constructs have not been added.Linking BoundaryLinked boundary count reporting in the log file has been added. Now it reflects the total number of boundaries in the result of linking, in addition to the total number of boundaries. e.g. Linked 4 Open 1 Closed figures. 1 Closed polygons output.Version 5.43 (04-24-1997)
Centering TextText inserted with reference to the center was not centered precisely in the gerber output. This has been fixed.Flashes/Blocks Insertion not ScaledOlder versions of Asm50X do not scale flashes and blocks insertion point correctly. This has been fixed.Unit ConversionOlder versions of Asm50X do not convert English data to Metric and Metric to English. Only MIL to INCH, CM to MM, etc. For example, user specifies DXF file unit as MM and Gerber unit as INCH and the output gerber will be in INCH. Scale is set to 1.0, no special attention is needed. Autodraw and autoflash dimensions are converted from MM to INCH automatically. This has been fixed.Missing TextWhen text generated from AutoCAD R13, it might be in unicode format, binary format, or ascii. Older versions of Asm50X only support ascii text, so some text might be missing in the output. This version now supports all formats.MDA OutputMDA output from older versions of Asm50X would point to the next MDA file even though they were not merged. This version only generates MDA files which point to the next file when merging.
User Interface
Network LicensingOlder versions report "(99) License Error" on large translations (longer than 95 seconds) when using network licensing. This has been fixed.Translation CrashWhen hitting "Start Translation", the translation engine would sometimes crash at the very beginning. This has been fixed.Long File NamesAsm50X 5.43, Gbr2dxf 3.27 and Gbrvu 1.85 have warning messages when a file with long file name is selected or specified. (Long file name is not supported).Reporting Translation WarningsWhen translating DXF layers with different settings, Asm50X used to report the number of warnings after each layer translation. Now, Asm50X only reports the total number of warnings after translating all layers.Asm50X Disappearing after TranslationOlder versions of Asm50X tends to go to the 'background' after translation, (behind Program Manager), the problem has been fixed in this version.
GBR2DXF Translator
Skipping Non-GBR-Drawing Header InformationThis version of gbr2dxf skips any blocks or lines in the beginning of a Gerber file that don't make up part of the GBR drawing, i.e. Gerber files starting with M00. In addition to this, G57 codes are treated as comments.Version 5.42 (01-28-1997)
Layer Dialog Box - New FeaturesUsers can turn on/off layers, toggle layers mode to Off/Mode1/2/3, toggle layers to fill/outline with a single mouse click. This reduces the tedium of changing 20 layers with 20 mouse clicks.Use Film Merge in another JobUsers who had set up elaborate film merge files can now re-use these settings. The "Use Job" button in "Select DXF File" dialog box allows the user to make a copy of a previous job so that the same settings (layer info, merge info) can be used for the current dxf file.Note: Both dxf files should share the same layer names. it is advisable to use the same working directory for both files. New Key Diagnostic ProgramAdded Readkey.exe and Readkey.doc to help users track down hardware key and key string problems. This utility returns information on the hardware key attached to any of the parallel ports. Returned info should be emailed or faxed to Artwork.
Flash Circles/Donuts Using Non-Round/Non-Donut DcodePrevious releases would flash circles and donuts only if the associated dcode was either round or donut. Users who attempted to define the d-code as some other type found that no flash was generated. This has been fixed.DXF File End-Of-Line MarkerThis release supports DXF files with the following end of line markers:
'carriage-return' This feature was implemented to support DXF files coming from DOS, Windows, UNIX and Mac machines. The translation engine also attempts to identify the input file as a DXF file by reading the first few characters and comparing them to expected data. If not a DXF file no longer hangs and a error message is issued. Scale Fillable FontsBug Fix: The hatch lines for a fillable SHX font were scaled twice; resulting in hatch lines much larger than the font outline.Version 5.41 (10/30/1996)
Bug Fix: Version 5.39 (09/18/1996)
Bug Version 5.38 (08/06/1996)
BUG FIX - arcs
BUG FIX: Scaled Blocks with Circular ON
Duplicate Block Names
Square Aperture Fills
Version 5.37 (07/18/1996)MDA Autoplot HeaderAdded option to control machine resolution. 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16th of a mil. Increased precision of the aperture dimensions from 3 places to 6 places. Fixed a bug in the aperture dimensions when running ASM 50X in mm mode. General Enhancements Extended the range of the format statement from 0.1 to 6.3 including 2.6, 2.7, 3.5, 3.6 etc for higher resolution applications. Fixed a precision problem when converting donuts to flashes. Raymond Larraway of Product Engineering reported that 0.063 dia donuts were written out as 0.064 dia donuts. The layers in the layer table now appear in alphabetical order. User can now cancel the translation during the time the program is generating Gerber data by clicking on Cancel button.
Import Enhancements
Version 5.35 (04/16/1996)Fixes to User Interface asm500.exe, asm502.exe and asm501.exeIncreased number of layers supported to 256. The output of film merge can now be created in a directory different that the current directory The film merge routine now supports more than 16 layers - earlier versions misbehaved if more than 16 layers were specified per merge. When launching GBRVU from the main menu, the working directory was not always passed to GBRVU. This caused GBRVU to crash when attempting to view MDA or RS274X type Gerber files. This has been corrected.
Fixes to the translation engine (a2gengin.exe, a2g501.exe, a2g502.exe) Fixed a bug when processing polyline arc bulges - some bulges were creating little circles (i.e. incorrect rotation all the way around) Fixed a subtle problem related to processing DXF files with an empty block reference - if float layer zero=on some data would be dropped in the output.
Certain SHX files would cause the font reader routine to hang. These were the HD-LB.SHX family - a very large multi-stroke SHX file -Fixed Miscellaneous ModulesAdded 256 layer support to aperture list writer for ECAM, MDA Autoplot, RS274X, Wise Gerbtool, and Graphicode Added layer and color information to the Lavenir ENV aperture format.
Fixed the Mentor aperture list importer- apparently there is some variation in the construction of Mentor aperture lists - a variant we hadn't seen before caused the aperture translatorto hang.
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