Joel Koltner wrote:

"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in message
news:Y7aLj.538$7Z2.175@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net...

From Pentalogix? Thanks, Anton. Will download now, they just sent me
the password.


www.bugmenot.com is good for finding such passwords if you don't want
to go through the whole registration procedure.


I don't mind giving my address to a reputable company. After all, it is
nice of them to provide the community with a free viewer. I have tried
Viewmate before and it didn't work well for my stuff but will try the
new version.

Actually, their older version works great for me - BUT - the newer

Joerg wrote:
Joel Koltner wrote:

"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in message
news:Y7aLj.538$7Z2.175@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net...

From Pentalogix? Thanks, Anton. Will download now, they just sent me
the password.


www.bugmenot.com is good for finding such passwords if you don't want
to go through the whole registration procedure.


I don't mind giving my address to a reputable company. After all, it
is nice of them to provide the community with a free viewer. I have
tried Viewmate before and it didn't work well for my stuff but will
try the new version.

Actually, their older version works great for me - BUT - the newer
version cannot work for the lack of some kind of missing module that the
installer complains about.

On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:46:24 GMT, Joerg
notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Anton Erasmus wrote:
On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:36:08 GMT, Joerg
notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

a7yvm109gf5d1@netzero.com wrote:
On Apr 8, 2:48 pm, RHRRC <h.le...@connect-2.co.uk> wrote:
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.

Thanks
What's a "handler"? I've honestly never heard this term in
relationship to a program before... Is Notepad a text handler?
No, a text wrestler ;-)

Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?
[Snipped]

Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.

Hey thanks! Viewmate does do some colors in transparent. Not all but
some. This will be much easier on the wrist. Zoom is not as good as in
GC-Preview so there will be times when one viewer is better and times
where the other is better.

If your mouse has a scroll wheel, the CTRL - scroll for zoom

On Apr 9, 7:46 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:
Anton Erasmus wrote:
On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:36:08 GMT, Joerg
notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net> wrote:
a7yvm109gf...@netzero.com wrote:
On Apr 8, 2:48 pm, RHRRC <h.le...@connect-2.co.uk> wrote:
Any recommendations for a Gerber viewer and/or handler greatly
appreciated.
The more the merrier (don't ask why) but I really need a good long
list.
Thanks
What's a "handler"? I've honestly never heard this term in
relationship to a program before... Is Notepad a text handler?
No, a text wrestler
Anyway, personally I like GC-PreView but it has the same shortcoming as
most (all?) Gerber viewers. It does not offer see-through planes so on
RF boards you have to constantly hide/unhide layers. Does anyone know a
Gerber viewer that offers transparent or at least grid-style color settings?
[Snipped]
Viewmate can do transparent as well as grif-style colour layers.
Hey thanks! Viewmate does do some colors in transparent. Not all but
some. This will be much easier on the wrist. Zoom is not as good as in
GC-Preview so there will be times when one viewer is better and times
where the other is better.

--
Regards, Joerg

If you don't like Viewmate, try GCpreview. It does transparent colors
and has the ever so nice zoom by scroll wheel. I use FreePCB for
layout and the author took the scroll wheel one step further. Once
you have moved the mouse, the first click of the scroll wheel does not
zoom, but just pans to put the cursor at center. So you can more
easily move as well as zoom using just the mouse and wheel.

The issue you see with just "some colors" working in transparency is
because of the way they implement it. They are just "adding" the
values of the three primary colors (or maybe taking a max). So if the
result is not different from one of the two colors being "mixed" it
will look like it is opaque. All you need to do is to change the
colors. It is hard to make a lot of planes different enough to be
useful, but you can easily get some 6 or 8 planes to contrast two at a
time.

I think this is due to the ancient roots of layout software. In DOS
days the graphics hardware was much more limited. Today the way to do
this is to implement true "transparency" with a more complex mixing
algorithm making one layer transparent with the other showing
through. If you check out a photo/art program you can see the
difference this makes. I don't know how practical this is. Two
layers is one thing, but displaying a dozen layers transparently may
be a real chore.