Running Gerber Union on Linux&Solaris

This page describes the basic procedure for running the Gerber Union. The product allows you to select one or a few Gerber files which you want to convert to clean contour data in DXF, Gerber, GDSII, and EGS output.

..bin/xgbrvu_union

Once you start the program, it will show you the Gerber files in the local directory. The default gerber extensions can be set in the Filter option below. At this point, select the Gerber files you want to process.
For our example, pick the icsxseed.gbr file and hit the OK button. The viewer will load and display the Gerber file.

Our viewer allows you to zoom, measure, plot, identify traces, turn layers on/off and many other features.
You can review all the viewer features at this web page:
xgbrvu web page

From the viewer menu, click on the Tools pull down menu, and then select the Gerber Union.
That will start the main Gerber Union menu.

The main menu of Gerber Union has many features as you can see. In most cases you can stick with the default values and just pick the output format and the output file name at the bottom of the menu.
Nevertheless, we recommend you learn all the features/options available in Gerber Union since it can improve the accuracy of your output file, reduce your output file size and more.
You can review all the options in the Gerber Union PDF manual available in the download page or on this web page:
Gerber Union Configuration web page

For our example, we will select the DXF output, and set the output file as icsxseed.dxf. Once finished with the settings, you can hit the OK button at the lower left of the menu.
The actual run time of Gerber Union depends mostly on the file size. The program will finish and create the DXF file in a few seconds. You can now view the DXF file in AutoCAD. Once you zoom in, you can see how traces and flashes were merged to create a nice contour around the filled area.

You can also run the software from a command line if needed. You need to use the gbrunmgr software to do that.
Here is a sample command line you can use to convert our sample file icsxseed.gbr and create a GDSII output file ics.gds.

/home/cad/gbrunion/bin/gbrunmgr icsxseed.gbr -out:/home/cad/gbrunion/examples/ics.gds -maxpoints:8000 -arcres:45.000000 -arcsag:0.000000 -outputtype:gds_stream -nocutlines -thrnum:1

For a list of all the command line options you can look here for command line details