How to make drill holes show up in Eagle image export?

Hi folks,
I've started to work in Eagle, but I still do home etching, so I am designing in Eagle and then displaying only the Top Layer, Pads, Vies, and Holes and then exporting the image as a monocrome and opening in photoshop.  My questions is that when I do this, the traces often go behind the drill holes for the pads, so I am having to create the drill holes in photoshop.  This is pretty time consuming.  Is there a way to visually make the traces not show up in the drill holes when exporting the image?

I believe you just have to turn off that layer when generating the gerber.

JR

It's the traces that go into the center of the hole-so I'd have to turn off the trace...

Screenshot?

Well if you use eagle and export to photoshop, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about-no screenshot needed.  There are workarounds in Photoshop by masking various colors, etc, but just wondering if there was an obvious way in Eagle...

I don't use it, but as far as I remember there's a script named "drill-aid.ulp" that helps creating new layer with drill holes for self etching.
It's in the eagle/ulp folder along other scripts.
Maybe that's what you're looking for.
Or maybe I'm wrong...

Mbira said:

Well if you use eagle and export to photoshop, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about-no screenshot needed.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry but I disagree, we'll need a screen shot. I've read your two posts multiple times and I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about and I use Eagle and Photoshop all the time.

Did you also know you can export without doing a screenshot using the export as .png functionality? That will give you a more accurate image export.

Here you go!

shot said:

... "drill-aid.ulp" ...

Click to expand...

Hey, that one really helped a lot!  Thanks!

So based on that diagram:
Your drill holes are not showing up after export, and you are adding them in Photoshop, which is painful.
Is that correct?

If so, I'll send you an Eagle library with a drill hole that'll sort you out.

And to prove I'm not just making it up, here is an example:

Looking at your example above, ideally I would like all the holes to be just black-like how your holes are above only on the left-most hole of each of those connectors.  Make sense? 

The print process empties the holes, and allows you to do the processing usually required for self etching.

If you are self etching, the following process works well for drilling.

For the top. 
Type ra
(gets a ratsnest in case you have copper flows)
Type disp none top pad via dim
(displays only top layer, pads, vias and dimension)
Type print
select black
select mirror (only if you want it reversed for toner transfer)
make sure scale factor is 1, calibrate is 1 and 1
click ok

That will print with white holes and black pads, and the thickness of the copper pad acts to help keep the drill centered while drilling.

You can also write it to a PDF but be forewarned, in that mode Eagle used to have a bug where it would do one pad wrong.  Don't know if that is fixed.

As far as the previous post, if you want it in color ( I don't see why for self etch) the color in the hole is the trace showing through.  But when you print as above but don't select black, you will get color but the holes will be white.

I can think of several ways to make the holes black, simplest of which is to type disp -top -bot.

Why do you want the holes black?

Lastly, If you just want drill holes, then maybe just print the drill layer.

I too am a little confused about what you are trying to accomplish.
Why are you photoshopping, I think that is the part that confuses me.

Of course scale is important too, so it is better to let eagle manage that while printing (or to PDF if it is fixed).
And you could do gerbers, but for self etch usually not needed and then you have to have software to read the gerber.

Bruce-your method almost works for me.  I can't print and need to save as a file to take somewhere to print on the velum with a high quality printer.  Exporting the image doesn't give me the drill holes and I need to fix them (hence the photoshop).  Your method of saving as a PDF almost works for me, but for some reason the PDF is showing as corrupted and won't open.  I did manage to open it on an online PDF viewer and the drill holes are correct (unlike when simply exporting the image), but so far the online viewer only lets me save the image as a low res gif. 

So I guess I just need to track down the PDF issue. 

Eagle will export to a valid PDF. 

If that is not working, I think it is not an eagle bug.  From your phrasing it sounds like maybe you are on a mac ( I am ) what version of Eagle?

On a mac you can export to PDF, then export the PDF from preview as whatever you want.

I'm using parallels and running Eagle on PC.  I agree it's probably just something with opening the PDF created on the PC in mac.  Not working right for some reason.  I'll look closer into it. 

Ugh... Eagle runs native in Mac.
Even the free eagle can open (and print) any size file (you just need the license to edit).

So open the file in the latest free eagle in mac, and print there.  should work.
b

When i print to PDF I get open holes...

yep-it seems printing to PDF gives open holes but exporting the image doesn't.  Thanks guys!

My 2 cents on this  : to "open" the holes while exporting the image I did the following :

- Modify drill-aid.ulp to remove the 0.05mm overlap, else your holes will be 0.05mm too large :


-  Then in Eagle run drill-aid.ulp and set the "drill center diameter" to 0

- Modify the fillstyle of the created "centerDrill" layer 116 to "full" and then modify the color to white (if you first mod the color you won't be able to notice the difference between the various fillstyles)

- Keep the layer displayed while exporting your image monochrome, you're done !

So nice not to have to do it manually in Photo$hop or GIMP...

Best regards.

Eric