(not a meme page)

The final step of PCB design is creating files that the PCB manufactures can read in order to fabricate your PCB. The most common filetype is a Gerber file, which is a set of files that individually describe each layer of a PCB. There will be a file that describes each copper layer, the silkscreens, the soldermask, the solder paste, locations of drills, and a few more.

You can manually generate these, but we use a more tightly integrated system in Altium called an OutJob. This hooks into Altium365 with Releases.

OutJob Creation

• Create new Output Job file

  

• Under Fabrication Outputs, enable “Gerber X2 Files” and “NC Drill Files”

  • In the Gerber X2 file configuration, open the configuration and then hit “Apply”. Yes, this is absolutely necessary, yes it’s also very dumb.
  • In the NC Drill Files settings, set to Inches and resolution of 2:4

• Under Report Outputs, enable “Bill of Materials” from ActiveBOM (or Project if you don’t have an ActiveBOM)

• Under Documentation Outputs, enable “Schematic Prints”, “PCB Prints”, and “PCB 3D Print”

  • In Schematic prints, set to Color
  • In PCB Prints, set to Color page, hide power planes and retrieve layer colours from PCB
  • In PCB 3D Print, make sure the view actually shows the interesting bits of the board, use 300DPI.

• After you’ve enabled these, the window should look like this:

  

• Rename the PDF output container to =ProjectName + "_Prints"

• Create an Output Container (folder structure) named “Fab Release” with the path =ProjectName + "_FabFiles"

  • Note that the third-level folder is set to “none”

  

• Route all Documentation Outputs to the default PDF output container

  

• Route all Fabrication Outputs to the Fab Release output container

  

• Route the Bill of Materials to the default Folder Structure

• Delete the default Video container

• Save the OutJob

Releasing Your Project

Once you’ve finished your project, you can release it! This will run the OutJob and push the output to Altium365. Do this right before you want to send it to the fab.

1. Go to Project → Project Releaser

   1. For Source Data and Fabrication Data, select the OutJob that you created (Options → check the box for your outjob). You only need to do these two, we don’t need to generate Assembly Data.