ASM 500W Family Revision History

This 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:

• DXF to Gerber

• Gerber to DXF

• GBRVU for Windows Revision History

Version 7.01a 64 bit (6-20-2024)

This 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)

This new release includes the following upgrades:

The new Gerber to DXF includes the following upgrades:

The new GBRMERGE includes the following upgrades:

The new GBRVU includes the following upgrades:

Version 6.69a (12-4-2014)

This release is with the latest installer.

Added support to Windows 8, 32 and 64 bit.

Version 6.63    (5-20-2010)

The DXF engine had a bug handling tapered plines. This has been fixed.

Added support to Windows 7, 32 and 64 bit.

Version 6.62a    (12-28-2009)

A 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)

ASM500 dropped an illegal polygon drawn as a bow tie. This has been fixed.

ASM500 converted incorrectly a block which was extruded along the Z axis and rotated. This has been fixed.

The 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)

The 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 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)

This version fixes a follow up issue to version 6.55a - it also had to do with circular data.

Version 6.55a    (5-12-2009)

This 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)

This 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)

This 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.

This version fixes a problem in the outline dcode selection when CIRCULAR is on and the outline dcodes were not POEX.

Reported by Crane Polyflon.

The DXF engine failed to process block names with non-printing characters. Reported by Dynatron.

ASM500 with De-embedding created empty Gerber files with certain DXF files which were not purged. This has been fixed. Reported by Tyco.

The 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.

The DXF engine didn't support ellipse entities in some cases. Problem reported by CTS Corp and was fixed.

The DXF engine now supports block and layer names that are longer than 32 characters.

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.

Added support for USB keys.

These versions fix the issue of spacing in TEXT in the presence of secondary fonts that contain the space character in their stroke table.

This version fixes a translator problem with the fonts isocp*.shx.

A problem was fixed when the working directory was long and had spaces in it.

Previous version of ASM50x didn't support files with more than 256 layers.This has been fixed.

There were two conversions issues with big fonts (far east fonts). This has been fixed.

There was a bug in the film merge when the layers merged had similar names. This has been fixed.

ASM50x working directory didn't pass to GBRVU. That resulted in drill files going to the wrong place. This has been fixed.

GBR2DXF crashed when the aperture table had the DEMB key word. This has been fixed.

0 width closed plines with arcs didn't get fill with ASM502 using the multi aperture fill mode. This has been fixed.

A bug in the shell caused bad films to be generated when circular data was used. This has been fixed.

Block data in the DXF file was converted to gerber and written twice in the Gerber file. This has been fixed.

When de-embedding was on, flashes disappeared in ASM500. This has been fixed.

When de-embedding is off, arcs that are part of a 0 width closed pline, get chopped to vectors. It is now fixed.

ASM50x crashed when scanning a file with over 10000 blocks. It is now fixed.

Polygon 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.
ASM500 De-Embedding

Program would not be able to create a job file under Windows 2000. It is now fixed.

Force working directory to be the same as the job file when passed as an argument.

Fixed a problem of calculating the radius when translating 360 degree 0 width closed pline arc.

Problem fixed with the multi aperture filling of polygons with arcs and re-entrant polygons.

Our ASM50X family support now big fonts - that allows us to converts SHX files of different languages like Japanese and Chinese.

ASM50x had problems converting certain arcs in circular mode. This has been fixed.

The installation programs would terminate early if hardware key (Sentinel) licensing was selected. This has been fixed.

ASM50x license modules would not support dates after 2010. This had been fixed.

A bug with the circular interpolation was fixed in this version.

This version includes support for Flexlm node locking and Flexlm floating license manager ...

A 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.

DXF to Gerber - New Polygon "Chopping" Function
DXF drawings with complex boundaries often exceed the Gerber limit of 4000 vertices per drawing. In the past, when this limit was exceeded, DXF2GBR would convert it to a line ouline and the user had to redraw the boundary in AutoCAD manually.

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....

Float 0
Float layer 0 option was fixed.

Polylines with Width
POLYLINE support is much more robust, and specifically addresses a situation where a POLYLINE folds back on itself. This version now supports POLYLINES with constant and changing width that would previously have generated self-intersecting boundaries.

Film Output File Names
Older versions limit the length of the file name without path to be 8.3 format. This limit has been removed. Long file names are allowed.

View RS274X Film Output
Older versions would not use the latest RS274X importer rs274x.ctl when viewing the RS274X film output. This has been fixed to use the latest RS274X importer.

View Gerber - Gbrvu Hidden
Under Windows 2000, when viewing Gerber, the viewer pops up but it is behind Asm500. This has been fixed.

New HostInfo Node Locking
The method of getting the hostid from the PC has been improved to eliminate cases where the machine had a network card but the hostid returned was null.

Demo Mode is Gone
If no valid license was obtained the old program would go into demo mode. This was confusing customers who weren't sure why they were running in demo mode. This mode has been deleted and only the license error message will appear.

Clipping Windows for Custom Apertures was Deficient
The number of maximum windows allowed for custom apertures was 128. It has now been increased to 10000. The other clipping window maximum has been increased the same for consistency.

Custom Aperture In a SR Layer
The contentx of custom apertures were SR'd by X and Y in addition of the SR itself. This has been fixed.

Undefined or Duplicate Block Definition in the DXF Output
Older versions might generate a DXF file with the above error if the Gerber file has custom apertures on layer 1 or above. This has been fixed.

Fixed SR handling Problem
If SR is followed by *, then the M02*command e.g.

%SR*%*
M02*

the translator would crash on this combination. This has been fixed to ignore the second SR in the same layer.

New keying/hostinfo 2.
No demo mode.
New about dialog.

Bulges when Filling
5.65 introduced a problem in filling. When the area to fill is relatively small comparing to the dcodes used, bulges would occur in the output.

Flash Donuts
Older versions would not flash donuts smaller than 0.001. This has been fixed.

New Filling Routine
Older versions would generate problems in filling, e.g. crash, not filled for large boundaries. This version applies a new filling routine which solves these problems as well as generates better filling.

%%c Special Character
Older versions would not translate %%c special character(the diameter symbol). This has been fixed.

Crash after "Analyzing Entities"
Older versions might crash when linking is on and the input has a lot of segments (>10000, depending on system resources). This has been fixed.

Lavenir Output
Older versions would crash if gerber format x.6 or x.7 is used. This has been fixed.

DXF Layer Names with Spaces
This version supports DXF layer name with spaces.

Flashing Circles Smaller than 0.001
Older versions would not flash circles smaller than 0.001. This has been fixed.

Compound Text (MTEXT) Crash
Improve robustness of compound text reading. Incomplete MTEXT (not enclosed with []) would cause Asm500 to crash. This has been fixed and Asm500 would detect and translate MTEXT even if [] is incomplete.

Text Shifted
Text would be shifted with different combination of insertation point. This verison of Asm500 has improved text insertion point interpretation.

Y2K Compliant
The New LSERV4 license manager now makes this program Y2K compliant.

New Improved CD/WEB Installation
This version comes with InstallShield EASY installation - self extracting for WEB and optimized for CD on CDROM. All support files are installed as needed by the Wizard. Also includes uninstall.

Long File Names Support
This version supports W95/NT4 long file names and long file names with spaces.

RS274X, MDA and Film Merge Demo Mode
This version supports RS274X, MDA and film merge output in demo mode. Now demo users can generate RS274X, MDA or merge gerber output on the demo set and be able to view the demo output on the gerber viewer.

Auxiliary Aperture
GraphiCode aperture output is discontinued from this version. Use RS274X as all major viewer/CAM programs can automatically read aperture header.

Flash Blocks
This version generates more informative warning message when a block is flashed using a dcode. Now it says the block will not be output and instead the corresponding dcode is output.

Flash Block Rotation
When flashing a block and the block is inserted with an angle in the DXF file, this version checks the angle against the dcode type for possible differences in the input and output. Older versions would always generate a warning for each insertion, potentially generating a huge error file; this version only generates a warning if rotating the dcode distorts the output.

rotating a round dcode through any angle will NOT generate a warning
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.

Update Floating License Manager
Updated LM to Lserv4. This enables both NT and 95 to host a license manager daemon.

Fixed Arc Bug
Arcs were not translated properly in fill mode autodraw with gerber circular on. This has been fixed.

Merge Output CR/LF
Older versions would always generate merge output with CR/LF suppressed. Now the merge function follows the user's spec from the configuration menu.

Fixed Bug when merging to RS274X and MDA
Fixed a bug introduced previously that would generate empty gerber output if user attempted to create a merged 274X or MDA formatted file.

Polylines POEX Not Filled
Fixed a problem on some polylines that have a non-zero starting width but zero internal widths at all vertices. Now recognizes these as zero width closed filled.

Total Number of Closed Polygons Output
Previous versions did not report correctly the total number of polygons output and in the log file. This routine has been fixed.

DXF Scanning Error Bug Fix
Under some conditions, Asm500 would not scan the DXF file successfully, and report Failed Scanning DXF file. This has been fixed.

POEX POIN Filling Error

PCL Plotter Driver

Version 5.47    (7-10-1997)

A 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.

When 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)

ASM 50x 5.45 had the text alignment problem fixed, but still generated shifted text output under some conditions. This has been fixed.

Single and Zero Vertex Count Polyline

Compensation with Precision finer than 0.001

UM to INCH/MM Conversion

Check if DXF File is really a DXF file

Text Alignment

Lightweight Polyline from AutoCAD R14

Linking Boundary

Centering Text

Flashes/Blocks Insertion not Scaled

Unit Conversion

Missing Text

MDA Output

User Interface

Network Licensing

Translation Crash

Long File Names

Reporting Translation Warnings

Asm50X Disappearing after Translation

GBR2DXF Translator

Skipping Non-GBR-Drawing Header Information

Layer Dialog Box - New Features

Use Film Merge in another Job

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 Program

Flash Circles/Donuts Using Non-Round/Non-Donut Dcode

DXF File End-Of-Line Marker

'carriage-return'
'line-feed'
'carriage-return and line-feed'

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 Fonts

Bug Fix:
Circular on and poex outline mode was not working - When a pline with double point and changing width, the width remained the same after translation -

Bug
When going into Flash Circles/Donuts dialog box, one needed to scroll through the pages to make the flashes, otherwise, only the first page is flashed. Fix
Now - click OK and everything is flashed using the default names.

BUG FIX - arcs
A fairly aggravating bug was introduced into version 5.37 related to the translation of arcs and polyline arcs. This seemed to affect arcs whose angle was in the range from 180 to 360 degrees and was traced to a problem in the Microsoft compiler's tangent function. We worked around the tangent function's error and corrected the bug. Very few copies of 5.37 were shipped; anyone running it should contact us for a replacement.

BUG FIX: Scaled Blocks with Circular ON
We fixed a bug which occured when circular=360 (i.e. circular interpolation is turned on) and the dwg contains blocks inserted at scale. The program was ignoring the block scale factor and processing the block entities at 1:1. This has been corrected.

Duplicate Block Names
A customer submitted a DXF file that caused ASM 500 to lock up. We traced the problem to the BLOCK table - there were two block definitions using the same name. This caused the DXF scanning routine to hang. We've modified the scanning routine to be resistant to this problem - an error message is now generated. Note that AutoCAD itself would not DXFIN this same file.

Square Aperture Fills
Earlier versions of ASM 50x would not use any aperture defined as a square for polygon filling purposes. Only round apertures were acceptable. Some customers wanted to be able to fill with square apertures.

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
Updated the RS274X import routines to better accommodate commented commands starting with G04. Requested by Moshe Ohayon at Elmo Semiconductors.

Version 5.35 (04/16/1996)

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)
Increased number of layers supported to 256.

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

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.