Introduction

Welcome to the Gerber Formatter documentation. This documentation is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the Gerber Formatter including usage, options and examples.

Info

Please note that this API is lower-level than one offered by the GerberFile object you can find here. In many cases GerberFile interface will be more intuitive and easier to use, hence it is usually better to stick with it unless you have specific needs that are not covered by it.

What is the Gerber Formatter?

The Gerber Formatter is a tool that can be used to format Gerber files. It can be used to reformat Gerber files to make them more readable or the opposite, to compress them to save precious disk space. Technically, formatter includes also minor code modernization features although less powerful than the Optimizer.

Why?

Gerber files are often used just as transfer format and rarely it is necessary to read them directly. However, in those rare cases when you have to look into them, it would be nice for them to be more readable than what your CAD software of choice happens to spit out. This is where the Gerber Formatter comes in handy.

How?

The Gerber Formatter can be used both as a command line tool and as a library. The command line tool can be accessed via pygerber gerber format subcommand while library API is available through pygerber.gerber.formatter module. Command line usage is covered in Gerber command line documentation while API usage and configuration options are covered in API usage.