CAM Tutorial

PollEx CAM is a Gerber tool that can import Gerber and drill files to check and edit design. In addition, PollEx CAM supports to compare two Gerber files.

  1. Launch PollEx CAM.
  2. Import Gerber File.
    1. From the menu bar, click File > Import > ASCII Gerber.
    2. Select all files from C:\ProgramData\altair\PollEx\<version>\Examples\Modeler\CAM\PollEx_CAM_Sample_274X_T1_r1.0 and click Open.
    3. Click Import.
  3. Layer View Control.
    1. Disable the bottom-metal.phd checkbox from the list on the left pane.


      Figure 1.
    2. Disable all layer checkboxes except top-signal.phd.


      Figure 2.
    3. Double-click the color column of the top-signal.phd layer to change the layer display color.
    4. Select a color.
      Green is used in this tutorial.


      Figure 3.
    5. Click View > Zoom Window or click to zoom-in on a certain area.


      Figure 4.
  4. Measure Distance Between Objects.
    1. From the menu bar, click View > Measure > Object to Object or click .
    2. Select Edge to Edge, Distance, and Object to Object in the Measure dialog.


      Figure 5.
    3. Click two different objects.
      The distance of the two objects is displayed with detailed information in the right pane.


      Figure 6.


      Figure 7.
    4. From the toolbar, click and .
  5. Gerber Data Comparison.
    1. Select all files in the path C:\ProgramData\altair\PollEx\<version>\Examples\Modeler\CAM\PollEx_CAM_Sample_274X_T2_r1.0 and click Open.
    2. Disable all layer checkboxes except top-signal.phd and top-signal.phd1.
    3. Select top-signal.phd1 and top-signal.phd while pressing the Ctrl key.


      Figure 8.
    4. In the Layer dialog, right-click and select Cross Probe > XOR from the context menu.
      This feature displays only the difference between the data.
    5. In the Layer dialog, right-click and select Cross Probe > Merge from the context menu.
      This feature displays both data and displays differences with different colors.