Standard Gerber Declared Obsolete

In May 2014, Ucamco, the company that maintains Gerber specifications, released an “Open Letter to the Gerber User Community” and stated “Standard Gerber is now technologically obsolete.”

Here Is Why

There have been a number of important updates to the Standard Gerber format in recent months. Ucamco has made changes to improve the format and has renamed the new standards as Gerber X2, or, Extended Gerber.

For many years now there have been challenges when translating Gerber data from a customer/designer’s CAD program to a manufacturer’s CAM program. Inconsistent standards have been used by many software applications and much of the most important information is not communicated via the Gerber files at all.

In November of 2013, with the help of manufacturers, Ucamco posted a draft review of the new Gerber X2 standard. After several months of community review they incorporated several additional attributes that can be defined including:

Gerber file function: top copper layer, top solder mask, etc
Part: single PCB, customer panel, etc
Object function: SMD pad, via pad, etc
Drill tolerances
Locations of impedance-controlled tracks
Filled vias
An MD5 checksum (for added security)

Key Takeaways

1. The goal of the new standard is to improve the communication from CAD to CAM in order to eliminate errors that can impact manufacturing quality and delivery times.

2. The new standard is not a complete overhaul of the old one but adds key information that is needed to manufacturer circuit boards.

3. When exporting data, PCB design software may still show the term “standard”. As such, when exporting files for manufacturers, users should always select the “Extended” option.

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Standard Gerber Declared Obsolete