PCB Board Design Rule Check

Now we can run a Design Rule Check (DRC) on the layout drawing from PCB Board reverse engineering, which will ensure that we have no short circuits, that everything is routed, etc. It can be accessed from Tools/Design Rule Check. Leave the Defaults set, and click Run DRC. A text file should appear and say that no violations appeared. If there are issues, fix them, use Tools/Reset Error Markers, and then rerun the Design Rule Check.

The PCB design is now complete. All that remains is to transfer the PCB out of Protel in a format that can be understood by either the PCB manufacture or the T-Tech software. Your board design should now be ready to be manufactured after Design Rule Checking. This is accomplished by exporting the design to a series of files know as Gerber Files. These are an industry standard format that all the PCB manufactures use for layout information.

Run File/CAM Manager. Select Gerber for the Output. Leave the name as it is, and ignore the notice about Embedded Apertures. Leave the Defaults for the Next Window
(Units and Format). For the Gerber Layers to Plot, Select only the Top Layer and the Keepout Layer, and make sure neither is set to be mirrored. Leave the remaining settings as default.

Protel Now displays a new window whose Tab is Titled Cam Outputs. Run Edit/Insert NC Drill. Use the Defaults and click OK. The main window should now say both Gerber Output 1 and NC Drill Output 1. Run Tools/Generate CAM Files. Return to the Documents Folder, and then open the CAM older. You should see several files. We are interested in the *.GTL (Gerber Top Layer), *.GKO (Gerber Keepout Layer) and *.TXT (NC Drill) Files. Select these files and run File/Export.