I wanted to print the negative artwork from a PCB that I've designed. The problem is that I couldn't find that option in Altium Designer. I found that I can create a solid layer and then play with the colors of the print. But I wanted something better. I found that Altium can export a Gerber with negative, but I couldn't put the holes and the negative affects all the page (I wanted to negate only the PCB, so I don't waste too ink). What Can I do? Thanks!
Electrical – Negative Artwork in Altium
altiumnegativepcbprinted
Related Solutions
A little late to the show here...but I think the missing step is that when you produce a PDF output from Altium you have to specify that you wish the the PDF to take the PCB Page Size and Orientation Source from the Page Setup Dialog.
You can find this option within an output job > output containers > your PDF output > Advanced button at the bottom > Bottom left corner.
By default this option is set to Source Document and so you will find that changing the page setup will not have the scaling or orientation effects you were hoping for.
Hope that helps anyone else!
In the 'Page Setup' at 'Scaling Mode' select 'Scaled Print' (instead of the default 'Fit Document on Page') and then set the Scale to 1.00
Once you've printed it, double check a couple of measurements in different areas of the board in case your printer doesn't scale perfectly enough.
Best Answer
You can use the
File>Fabrication Output>Gerber
to generate the output of the required layers. Then on the generated Camcastic file you can go to
Tools>Film Wizard
There you can select the Negative for the layers and then you can also mirror the layers you want. Afterwards you just have to print the file. The printed file can be imported into Gimp and thus you can select the unused black parts and delete them to save the ink. I hope this makes sense.