On Jun 15, 9:06*pm, "Leland C. Scott" wrote:
Great. Thanks for the input. One other thing. I have a buddy who was looking
for a free Gerber editor for making minor artwork changes. He had some
boards done outside and needs to make some changes to fix a few boo-boos
when he did the design. You know of any? He only has Windows. I run Windows
and Linux so either would work. I could make the changes for him.


....
Well, I'm using ViewMate from PentaLogix. I don't do anything very
complex with it, basically just view my FreePCB outputs to make sure
everything is OK. I also use it to print the Gerbers for assembly
documentation and to make my own boards at home--I like the immediacy
of being able to make a board in an hour or two. ViewMate's free...
BUT it won't let you save changes. You have to spring for the upgrade
to ViewMaster EZ for $50 to be able to save (and do some other
things). There may be free solutions, but since ViewMate does what I
need, I haven't gone looking for them.

For fixing boo-boos, I'd a lot rather go back to the PC design program
and make the changes there, rather than hand-editing Gerbers, but I
suppose there are good reasons to modify the Gerbers directly. I do
recall some hassles trying to get my layout program do what I wanted
with a solder mask recently, and was really tempted to try to modify
the Gerbers!

Cheers,
Tom