Reverse engineering

[LoL]

How to work reverse engineering on CAM files? For example how to calculate number of smd and trough hole pads on CAM file (gerbers)?

Any literature about the writing scripts in Altium?

[robertferanec]

- I normally do not work with CAM files, but I believe some CAM / Production softwares may be able to help you with it: http://www.downstreamtech.com/revers...g-products.php

- We do not use Altium scripts. I would probably just google some examples and tried to understand them

[mairomaster]

I haven't been into scripting a lot, but recently I needed to do some work modifying a script. The best documentation that is available from Altium you can find here:

https://techdocs.altium.com/display/SCRT/Scripting

Apart from that, as Robert said it's good to go through some ready scripts and try to understand them. I good bunch of them you can find here (use the download ZIP button):

https://github.com/Altium-Designer-addons/scripts-libraries

[LoL]

Thank you for informations. I will update this topic, when I find more infos and do some examples about scripts and reverse engineering.

[abarnai]

Hi LoL , did you find any scripts that ran on a recent version (Altium 10+) Altium Designer and were doing something practical? When I looked into this a few months ago, I found that supposedly it is a hit-and-miss situation, because the scripting API has not been updated to the object structure with later versions or the software or tested. I would be very interested in seeing scripts that work and do something useful in Altium.

The scripts I was writing certainly did not work, and we hired a consultant to look at them with previous experience in Altium scripting and he thought that there was nothing wrong with them. He also refused to take up projects from us to make Altium scripts for us, because he said he could not guarantee a successful outcome. He emphasized the crucial role of 'experimentation' if I was to make any more scripts.

[abarnai]

Hi robertferanec and mairomaster , the script examples you mentioned did not seem to run right on Altium 13.3. If I remember, they were exiting usually before the end of the scripts, almost like an 'invisible exit' instruction. I did find those you mentioned with googling myself at the time.

Did you manage to successfully run those on Altium, and if yes, what version?

[mairomaster]

Every script is independent and often developed by different people, so some might currently work, some might not anymore. For example I worked on updating the following one, so that it works with Altium 16:

https://github.com/Altium-Designer-addons/scripts-libraries/tree/master/AdjustDesignators2

[abarnai]

mairomaster Thank you for the info, I will try it over the weekend, try to understand it if it works and get back to you.

[mairomaster]

Actually I am not quite sure if it's backward compatible at the moment, it might not be. It should be running OK on Altium 14+.