GBR2MIC Translation Settings

Translation Settings

GBR2MIC has several options on how the conversion from Gerber to MIC should be performed. Some of these options are only available with the add-on Union license because they use a powerful boolean union operation. These options interact in different ways that are not always obvious. The tables below summarize how the various options affect the MIC conversion.

You may also wish to examine the timing benchmark page.

Standard Pass Through Mode

Option	Setting	Notes
Arc Segmentation	OFF	round flashes as circles to MIC; round draws preserve round ends.
Macro Full Boolean	OFF	not recommended. If a macro has a scratch function and is used on a LPC (clear) layer the results in MIC will be incorrect.
Compaction	OFF	No attempt to unionize any data within SR blocks
Full Boolean	OFF	No attempt to booleanize data passed to MIC.

Arc Segmentation ON

Option	Setting	Notes
Arc Segmentation	ON	round flashes converted as polygons; ends of round draws are segmented. Arcsag and Arcres parameters are used to determine how many segments used to approximate the arc.
Macro Full Boolean	OFF	not recommended. If a macro has a scratch function and is used on a LPC (clear) layer the results in MIC will be incorrect.
Compaction	OFF	No attempt to unionize any data within SR blocks
Full Boolean	OFF	No attempt to booleanize data passed to MIC.

Arc Segmentation and Macro Boolean ON

Option	Setting	Notes
Arc Segmentation	ON	round flashes converted as polygons; ends of round draws are segmented. Arcsag and Arcres parameters are used to determine how many segments used to approximate the arc.
Macro Full Boolean	ON	recommended. If a macro has a scratch function it will be booleanized. Segmentation using Arcres/Arcsag parameter.
Compaction	OFF	No attempt to unionize any data within SR blocks
Full Boolean	OFF	No attempt to booleanize data passed to MIC.

Compaction Mode

Option	Setting	Notes
Arc Segmentation	ON	If compaction is ON, then Arc Segmentation is forced ON.
Macro Full Boolean	ON	recommended. If an aperture macro has a scratch function it will be booleanized. Segmentation using Arcres/Arcsag parameter.
Compaction	ON	Looks inside of SR blocks and unionizes draw data: D02 and G36/G37. This option requires more processing for Gerber to MIC but also significantly decreases the MIC to ST time. Overall throughput is generally greatly improved for large files using SR command. Requires the GBRUnion add-on license.
Full Boolean	OFF	No attempt to booleanize data passed to MIC.

Full Boolean Mode

Option	Setting	Notes
Arc Segmentation	ON	If compaction or Full Boolean is ON, then Arc Segmentation is forced ON.
Macro Full Boolean	ON	recommended. If an aperture macro has a scratch function it will be booleanized. Segmentation using Arcres/Arcsag parameter.
Compaction	ON	Looks inside of SR blocks and unionizes draw data: D02 and G36/G37. This option requires more processing for Gerber to MIC but also significantly decreases the MIC to ST time. Overall throughput is generally greatly improved for large files using SR command. Requires the GBRUnion add-on license.
Full Boolean	ON	Unionizes all data in the input file whether or not it falls inside of the SR blocks. If multi-layer is selected, it does not combine LPD/LPC layers. If single-layer is selected all LPD/LPC layers are unionized to create a single layer MIC output. This mode will also detect (and correct) self-intersecting polygons such as bow ties that would otherwise be passed through to the MIC output (and which if passed through, would cause the MIC to ST rasterizer to fail.

Notes

Macro Boolean	We recommend that this option always be set = ON. Leaving it off risks bad data if macros with scratch functions are used on LPC layers.
Arc Segmentation	We recommend that this option always be set = ON. It has been reported in the past that MIC files with arc data cannot be used when mask shrinkage correction is turned on in the MIC to ST rasterizer.
Compaction	We recommend that this option (if it is licensed) be set = ON when processing larger Gerber files that make use of the SR command. Our tests indicate that through the conversion time rises, the processing time for MIC to ST is greatly reduced resulting in overall improvement in throughput.
Full Boolean	We recommend that this option (if it is licensed) be set = OFF unless the user has a very specific need to fully booleanize the MIC file.