13 Facts About Gerber format

Gerber format is an open ASCII vector format for printed circuit board designs.

Gerber format file contains the complete description of a PCB layer image without requiring any external files.

Standard Gerber was a numerical control format designed by Gerber Systems Corp to drive their vector photo plotters for the PCB industry in the 1960s and 1970s.

Standard Gerber was a simple ASCII format consisting of commands and XY coordinates.

Standard Gerber is an NC standard but not an image description standard: essential image information such the coordinate unit and the apertures definitions are not standardized.

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Standard Gerber format was intended for a manual workflow using an NC machine called a vector photoplotter: the plotter operator loads the paper tape with the Standard Gerber format file on the plotter, manually sets the coordinate unit on the machine console and mounts the aperture wheel described in the accompanying wheel file.

Gerber file format is named after Joseph Gerber, an entrepreneur and inventor who pioneered vector photoplotters.

Standard Gerber became the de facto standard image format for PCB fabrication.

In 1991 with the availability of the more capable raster photoplotters, the Gerber format was extended with polygon areas and "mass parameters".

In June 2013 Ucamco published a proposal to add three new commands to the Gerber format which allow inclusion of image attributes conveying metadata attached to the image and its components.

Gerber format X2 is fully backward compatible with X1, as the attributes do not affect the image.

Gerber format X2 was developed by Karel Tavernier, Ludek Brukner and Thomas Weyn.

In June 2017 a free online Reference Gerber format Viewer was made available by Ucamco as a complement to the specification.