New Import Bit Map Files (BMP):
• CAMMaster can read Windows bitmap files and convert them to polygons. This is extremely useful for generating CAD data from legacy designs (for which only film exists) or to import images such as company logos, etc. CAMMaster has two parameters users can set:
  • Treat Dark or Light pixels as copper, basically whether the image is positive or negative.
  • How to separate Black from White in a grayscale or color image. The user can specify the intensity of the pixel above which it will be considered white. For RGB images, the intensity is the average intensity of the red, green and blue components.
  File Printing Has Been Enhanced
• "File/Print": The graphics rendering routines for printing have been changed. Windows GDI routines are now used. As a result, printing should now work for all printers. This change should also allow capturing the image in a PDF file (with Adobe Acrobat Distiller) or a PostScript file. Note that this new method does not work on Windows 98 or ME.
  Improvements to File Import/Export:
• CAM products now export in Barco DPF format as documented in "DPF Format Description", DPF Version 5, November 1998, Barco Graphics.
• Drill:
  • Excellon format: a new option for exporting Step & Repeat blocks: "R Repeat Blocks". If checked, repeat codes (R#) will be used when possible. If unchecked, repeat codes will not be used and each M02 block will be output by itself. This is useful for machines that do not support the R codes and to minimize the number of M01 (End of Pattern) commands, as there is a limitation of at most 3 nested M01s (Excellon spec).
  • Sieb & Meyer format: support for G84 (Nibble Hole), G85 (Nibble Slot), M97, M98 (Drill Plain Test).
• Gerber:
  • The user is warned if a self-intersecting polygon is encountered in the input.
  • The "Full circles in polygons" setting has been removed from "Options/File Interpretation". The "Ignore" choice caused full circles to be silently ignored, which was a problem for many users.
• Netlist: misaligned X and Y coordinates in the "Feature Location" field (columns 42-57) are now accepted.
• Directory/Zip: Files that contain all the necessary format information such as Extended Gerber will be displayed in "blue". The options menu now has a checkbox "Format unknown files to formatted" If selected, files that do not contain all of the format information (such as drill files) will be formatted/scaled to fully formatted files (such as Extended Gerber). These files will be displayed in green and can still be edited.
• Aperture Wizard: A new checkbox has been added in the third menu titled "Treat commas as decimal ex: 1,00 = 1.00" This will allow the aperture wizard to import files using the European style of decimal identifiers.
  Create Custom Toolbars for User Scripts:
• CAMMaster- Now users can create their own custom toolbars to organize and run their scripts. This is just another feature Pentalogix offers their customers to streamline their CAM operations.
  View Elements overlapping the Cursor:
• Place you cursor over an area of a board, right click, select "View elements overlapping Cursor" and a list of all the elements will appear. Netlist connections, padstacks, layers, polygons... everything. Greatly simplifies inspecting boards.
  New Replace Polygons with holes:
• The ability to replace polygons with holes with a set of polygons without holes. This is useful for many reasons. One is that the Gerber syntax for polygons (G36/G37) does not allow specification of certain polygons as being holes inside other (containing) polygons.
  • Edit/Edit Selection/Polygons/Decompose Into Strips: will replace any selected polygons that have holes with a number of horizontal polygonal strips without holes, such that the result will represent the exact same copper (same image).
  • A new tab in the “File/Export/Gerber” Options dialog called “Polygons”. It has two choices for exporting polygons with holes:
    • Put holes in scratch layer
    • Decompose into strips
  Text Editing has been improved:
• The internal representation of text has been changed. Text is now treated is a separate entity (a composite element) so the text can be modified at a later time; editing the text string, changing the font, rotation, etc. This is especially useful for changing date codes on repeat jobs.
• "Extra Spacing" items added for extra character and line spacing. Character and line spacing can be increased by entering the desired values in the dialog boxes.
  Layer Information:
• Setup/Layers (F10):
  • Two views of this setup dialog are now available: by layer and by board layer. The first (by layer) is the same as the operation of this dialog in previous versions. The second (by board layer) shows only board layers (one entry per board layer).
  • The context menu (right mouse click) has several new commands:
    • "Move Up" "Move Down"- These commands will move (up or down) by one position a sequence of layers starting from the layer that one clicks on.
    • "Insert Selection" - will move a selected layer (or range) to the location where one clicks.
• Layers Toolbar: context menu (right click).
  • Two menu entries have been added: "Board Layer ON" and "Board Layer OFF". These will turn the visibility of a whole board layer ON or OFF, that is for all the layers that are part of that board layer.
  • Layers can now be replicated to a number of layers that need not be contiguous. Previously only a range of contiguous layers was allowed as the destination.
  Changes in User Interface:
• A Navigation View has been added to show an overview of the relative positions of the current view and the visible data and to allow quick modifications of the view. The current view is represented as a black rectangle and the extents of the visible data are shown as a filled green rectangle.
• Added support for a wheel mouse and support for the middle button of three-button mice:
  • Rolling the wheel zooms in and out. If the scrollbars are off, rolling forward zooms in and backwards zooms out. When the scrollbars are on, rolling the wheel will scroll the graphical area up and down.
  • Clicking the wheel (or middle-button of a three-button mouse) will pan the image so that the spot where the click happened will end up in the center of the screen. One can pan repeatedly by moving the arrow cursor close to one of the window edges and clicking the wheel repeatedly.
• Go command:
  • Center Of Selection: moves the cursor to the center of the bounding box of the currently selected elements.
  • Active Element/Center Of Closest: Similar to "Active Element/Closest" except that the cursor is moved to the center of the element. Most useful for polygons.
  
  New Scripting Methods and Properties:

  AddSnowmanFilleting	AddTeardropFilleting
  ChordsToArcs	ClipSilkscreenTraces
  DisplayFilledElements	DRCErrorsFile
  DRCMaskToMask	FillSolid
  GerberOutputSplitPolygons	PointIsInsideSelection
  SelectedText	UngroupSelectedText

FixMaster:

Importing /Exporting Fixture Templates Fixture and grid settings can now be saved and read in as a separate template type. This is useful when the operator has the job file data setup but decides to try a different fixture type. Export Verify Only job This option allows you to save a job file to be used exclusively by Verify. It can not be read back into FixMaster, ProbeMaster, or AutoFixture. This is useful when engineers need to send out files for Verify while ensuring that the fixture setups, etc. remain proprietary. Zero Offset for individual plates Some jobs require larger plates, especially on the outermost plate. Selecting: Setup/ Fixture/ Fixture Table each plate can be drilled with its own Zero Set command (Excellon G92/ G93). Condensed Tool Report Allows a condensed form of the tool table in the report. Tools that are more than one type ( fixture, test point, tooling, spacer, etc ) are reported instead as a single "multi" type. Padstacks User can now insert and delete pads while inspecting a netlist. Added Remove Padstack Options-This gives the operator the option of testing to the hole or the SMD. Remove SMD – removes SMDs from padstacks and keeps the thru holes. Remove Thru Hole – removes the thru holes and keeps the SMDs Wheel mouse support and support for the middle button of three-button mice: Rolling the wheel zooms in and out. Rolling forward zooms in and backwards zooms out. Each click zooms the same amount as a PgUp or PgDn would. Clicking the wheel (or middle-button of a three-button mouse) will pan the image so that the spot where the click happened will end up in the center of the screen. One can pan repeatedly in one direction by moving the arrow cursor close to one of the window edges and clicking the wheel repeatedly.

ProbeMaster:

Adjacency Histogram table Shows the number of nets of a particular gap value, and the number of nets less than or equal to the particular gap value. The histogram table also displays the number of nets within a gap value as a percentage of the total nets. This table allows the user to decide which adjacency threshold to use for that particular board based on a particular threshold value and the number of nets within that threshold. Integri Format ProbeMaster now supports exporting to the Integri format Export Verify Only job This option allows you to save a job file to be used exclusively by Verify. It can not be read back into FixMaster, ProbeMaster, or AutoFixture. This is useful when engineers need to send out files for Verify while ensuring that the fixture setups, etc. remain proprietary. Zero Offset for individual plates Some jobs require larger plates, especially on the outermost plate. Selecting: Setup/ Fixture/ Fixture Table each plate can be drilled with its own Zero Set command (Excellon G92/ G93). Test Point Stagger Will only stagger if the probe margin specified is bigger than one half the width/height of the SMD. Previously, it was possible to probe too close to one edge while maintaining the margin on the other side. Probot nets renumbering Probot nets with test points are now renumbered first. This ensures that all the Probot output nets will be consecutive. View Statistics "Stats" now shows test statistics for both sides of the board. Condensed Tool Report Allows a condensed form of the tool table in the report. Tools that are more than one type ( fixture, test point, tooling, spacer, etc ) are reported instead as a single "multi" type. Padstacks User can now insert and delete pads while inspecting a netlist. Added Remove Padstack Options This gives the operator the option of testing to the hole or the SMD. Remove SMD – removes SMDs from padstacks and keeps the thru holes. Remove Thru Hole – removes the thru holes and keeps the SMDs Wheel mouse support and support for the middle button of three-button mice: Rolling the wheel zooms in and out. Rolling forward zooms in and backwards zooms out. Each click zooms the same amount as a PgUp or PgDn would. Clicking the wheel (or middle-button of a three-button mouse) will pan the image so that the spot where the click happened will end up in the center of the screen. One can pan repeatedly in one direction by moving the arrow cursor close to one of the window edges and clicking the wheel repeatedly.