Command line usage¶
In addition to API, PyGerber also offers simple command line interface (CLI) for rendering Gerber files to raster and vector image formats. Although CLI is not as powerful as API, it is still useful for quick rendering.
Single file rendering¶
Single Gerber file can be rendered to both vector (SVG) and raster (PNG/JPEG) image formats.
Here is a minimalistic example of rendering a single Gerber file to PNG image:
PyGerber allows rendering rendering to PNG and JPEG formats. Additionally quality and
size of the image can be controlled using -q/--quality and -d/--dpmm flags. For full
list of available flags use --help flag.
For comparison, here is an example of rendering the same Gerber file to SVG image:
Multi-file project rendering¶
PyGerber also supports rendering multi-file projects. This is useful when you have multiple Gerber files that represent different layers of the same PCB and you want to generate a single image stacking them on top of each other with single command.
This can be done by providing list of paths to gerber files to pygerber render project
command.
Each path can be suffixed with @ and layer type name. This will affect color palette
used for rendering individual layers. For full list of available layer types check out
FileTypeEnum values. Layer names are case-insensitive.
pygerber render project src/pygerber/examples/simple_2layer-F_Cu.gbr@copper src/pygerber/examples/simple_2layer-F_Mask.gbr@mask src/pygerber/examples/simple_2layer-F_Paste.gbr@paste src/pygerber/examples/simple_2layer-F_Silkscreen.gbr@silk
When layer type is not provided, file type will be inferred from extension or file
attributes. If neither of those methods succeeds, FileTypeEnum.UNDEFINED will be used
resulting in use of debug color palette.
Thanks to file type inference, command below should produce the same result as the one above: