GBRUTIL Revision History

This page documents the revisions made to the GBRUTIL. Please consult it to determine if you are running the current version and to see what fixes/enhancements have been made to the program.

GBRUTIL V2.20c 6/6/2024

The size was increased from 128 to standard windows size.

If a program is listed in the list of "CHECK_FOR_CRASH" group, the log file it's writing to is checked for an "END_OF_OPERATION" token (If missing, unexpected termination is reported).
The resource file name is "run_bat_rsc.txt". An example of its contents is :

       B_CHECK_FOR_CRASH
       rs274xjb64.exe
       gbr2gdxx64.exe
       gdscomp64.exe
       boolw64f.exe
       gdsscale64.exe
       gdsfilte64.exe
       g2gbreng64.exe
       E_CHECK_FOR_CRASH

GBRUTIL V2.20b 2/16/2024

The built in error reporting system had a bug which was introduced on 29 January 2024 causing the program to crash. This has now been fixed.

GBRUTIL V2.20a 2/13/2024

Updated the boolean components.
Updated Gerber validation components.

GBRUTIL V2.20 5/17/2023

Fixed OEM Licensing.
Maintain sliver and chord error settings to input gerber units. This is done when "Preferences" are being configured and for each pair of Gerber files being booleanized.
Gerber preprocessing allows path with 0 width and uses arc resolution and chord error from settings.
A detailed log is saved in the output folder along with the gerber output.
GBRUTIL user interface now saves more folder locations. This includes the Work folder, Out folder, first and second input folders.
Fixed an issue where the user interface mistakenly locked its output files when the session was up.
The Advanced Preferences has a new edit field for manager arguments to be added to 274xormgr64.exe.
Updated the boolean components.

GBRUTIL V2.19a 5/13/2020

This is a new Windows 64 bit release.

GBRUTIL V2.18 10/19/2016

The internal usage of the offset argument passed to the boolean components was incorrect. This has been fixed.

GBRUTIL V2.17 09/13/2016

Second file offset and use of a window together were not working as expected. Data outside the specified window was removed before the second file was shifted. The shift is now applied first, then the window clipping is applied.

Long File Names were not properly supported in all cases due to the size of the internal buffers for such names (in particular with the launch of the Gerber viewer.) This has been fixed.

The Boolean engine was crashing when it encountered input files that were either zero bytes in size, or which had zero extents. This condition is now trapped and no crash occurs.

GBRUTIL V2.15d 3/14/2016

Optimized XOR of nearly or totally identical files.
XOR with differing data extents is handled.
Missing XOR data from customer files. This has now been fixed.

GBRUTIL V2.15b 11/4/2015

This fixes Gbrutil's inabilitty to apply an XY offset when performing a boolean operation.

GBRUTIL V2.15e 6/21/2016

Floating licensing scheme has been fixed for the following features:
Gbrutil (boolw32f.exe, bool64f.exe, gbrcomp.exe, gbrcomp64.exe)
The wrong libraries were linked into the components mentioned above. This has now been fixed.
The problem manifested itself on certain license servers depending on the version of that flexlm server (e.g. v11.13).

GBRUTIL V2.15a 4/7/2015

Whenever the GUI is run with keep mode off, set in preferences, the shell mistakenly reported that the batch file did not exist. This problem was introduced in the previous version, v2.15 (03/19/15), and has now been fixed.

GBRUTIL V2.15 4/1/2015

All customers wishing to use ACS Softkey Licensing will require a uniform supplemental soft key kit, a customer vendor key file, and two static vendor files.

Note to Nagai-san: You should carry out the following instructions to properly compile and use the soft key license test program.

          File Name           Description Instructions
          ---------           ----------- ------------
          vkf.txt             Vendor Key File       Place in 
                              (Expires 04/01/2018)  or wherever else desired, VKF_Directory.

          acsvendor_s.lib     32 bit Softkey Lib    Place in 

            Installation_Directory\bin\softkeyshell.exe
              "Installation_Directory\274xormgr.exe" Program_Arguments
              "-acsp:VKF_Directory\vkf.txt"

          Note that Gbrutil.exe can also be launched this way.

Xoring has been conditioned to work faster by detecting identical aspects between two files and removing them from XOR Boolean operations.

Step and Repeated items are unionized for one instance before instantiating the arrayed placements.

Support 64 bit Execution Calls

Maxpoints is Defaulted to 8000 instead of 4000.
Fixed Handling of 1 Warning Program return code of 1 was considered an error. This has been fixed to mean one warning.
Batch Mode is Disabled for ACS Softkey Licensing.

Standard Licensing (Flex + Sentinel USB ) is Added to 274xormgr.exe

Fixed Problem with Differing Gerber Format Specifications. When a format specification for a Gerber file was found to be too high, the file was scaled incorrectly. This has now been fixed.

Support Files with Internal Layers (LPD or LPC), Numbering 65535.

GBRUTIL V2.13 10/9/2013

This release uses a 64bit executable if ran from a 64bit machine to avoid memory limitations.

GBRUTIL V2.08 2/23/2010

In cases where an input has more than one layer polarity, the XOR stage requires that such input be unionized. The problem was that the unionization stage was passing bad data that was not validated and subsequently dropped. This has now been fixed.

GBRUTIL V2.04 2/23/2008

This fixes the program crash encountered with boolean intersections.

GBRUTIL V2.02 4/24/2008

The name of the Gerber Compare software was changed to Gerber Util. Other than the XOR operation (compare), GBRUTIL can also perform other boolean operations between two files like AND, OR.

GBRUTIL V1.16 12/20/06

The layer manager was fixed to supports Gerber files that contained over 60 internal layers of paint/scratch.

GBRUTIL V1.14 2/8/06

In some cases, a pop up window will stop the compare process because of mis communication between the GUI and engine. This has been fixed. This fix also improved the speed of the software.

GBRUTIL V1.15 3/8/06

A fix to the XOR engine.

GBRUTIL V1.14 2/8/06

In some cases, a pop up window will stop the compare process because of mis communication between the GUI and engine. This has been fixed. This fix also improved the speed of the software.

GBRUTIL V1.13 7/28/05

When one file, for example, had 3.5 format and another had 2.4, the program failed to finish completely. This has now been fixed..

Custom apertures are now always booleanized before checking file differences.

GBRUTIL V1.11 2/1/05

GBRUTIL had problems with filenames containing spaces and extra periods. It is now fully long filename compatible.

GBRUTIL V1.10 11/15/04

Better, more friendly summary view and reporting: Comparison results are now built right into the jobs list and a View Report button added.

Added multiple-job operations: remove selected, remove all, compare selected, and compare all

Under certain circumstances, the output Gerber file had extra binary data (garbage) after the end of the file (M02).

The XOR comparison engine has been updated to correct bugs reported since the last revision.

A number of unnecessary steps have been removed in the comparison process, resulting in improvements in comparison speed.

Fixes to the long file name support have been made after problems reported by end users traced to very long directory paths.

The progress bar now displays the number of jobs completed -- "job #/# on its title bar".

the "About" dialog now displays licensing information which can be helpful in debugging licensing problems.

If an input Gerber file was selected that was "empty" the program would go into an infinite loop attempting to read the data. This has been fixed.

GBRUTIL V1.06 09/05/04

This version modifies the user interface to allow for a group of files to be compared. In many cases, the designer needs to compare mutliple Gerber files (one per layer) for two designs. This version supports both identical file names (when located in different directories) and different file names.

GBRUTIL V1.04 08/13/04

Fixes a bug when the user specifies two different files that have the same file name but are located in different diretories. [reported by LSI Logic]

Fixes a bug in the output data when very large complex boundaries were encountered. Boundaries with greater than 4096 vertices were previously corrupted in the output. [reported by LSI Logic]

GBRUTIL V1.03a 07/15/04

this enhances the call to GBRVU so that when viewing the XOR (difference) data with one of the input files: 1) input files are a single solid color, 2)XOR file is displayed last so it is not covered by the input file.

corrects an error that occured when comparing two polygons with very large vertex count - the resulting high count output polygon was clipped -- the new output formatter now correctly supports very high vertex count polygons. (Reported by LSI Logic)

GBRUTIL V0.90 05/24/04

this is the initial beta release. It does not include the ability to offset the coordinates of the two input files. You must install GBRVU/W version 2.63H (or later) first, in order to use GBRUTIL.