Is There Any Way to do Negative Silkscreen in Eagle CAD ?
In the past, I wondered how Arduino boards have the inverted silkscreen art works. The folks behind Arduino use EAGLE CAD and I know for sure that Eagle doesn’t have any capability to generate inverted silkscreen. So, in the beginning I though it could be done by importing the art works as images using the import-BMP ULP.
The only way to do an inverted/negative form is by using a copper polygon and adding the objects (texts, lines, …etc) in the 41 layer (tRestrict), but the results will be in the copper layer and it will take up a considered area of the PCB.
Until the day I discovered a ULP called negasilk that converts the polygon to 21 layer (tPlace), but there are considered number of problems in this ULP:
- All polygons are processed. So you need to delete the unwanted shapes produced from the other functional polygons.
- This ULP generates a script file to be executed to finish ULP’s work.
To solve these problems, I made some enhancements to the original ULP:
- Only polygon with “NEG_SILK” signal name will be processed.
- No need for the script file anymore. The commands will be bypassed directly to the editor.
- The output is movable using ‘group tool’. No need for the old approach to move the output (Disable some layers, select group, move group and finally enable the layers back).
In the GIF bellow is a demo for the new ULP
[Update 1]
I encountered an execution loop when I used the ULP with a Polygon with zero width. After debugging the root cause, I found that fillings loop member of UL_POLYGON in ULP is causing the loop and after reviewing the ULP manual I found the following statement:
Filling a polygon with zero width may result in enormous amounts of data, since it will be calculated with the smallest editor resolution of 1/320000mm! EAGLE User Language – Version 9.2.0
The easiest solution is to assert execution when polygon width is zero to avoid zero width case which will result a long filling loop.
[Update 2]
Thanks to @motla, He found that running the ULP in Autodesk Fusion is broken due to changes in ULP in Fusion. So he ported the ULP to work in Fusion. Please check more details on the script’s repo.
Download
Looks great – I will give it a try. Before finding this, I was about to try generating gerbers as usual but assigning the Top and Bottom Silkscreen layers as a negative image when sending it to the board house. Theoretically, you would get an entire board covered with silkscreen but all text would be left open. You’d also be relying on the board house to clear the printing off of all pads and holes, but I think most do already.
I used to script to make negative silkscreen.
I wrote the text in 2 lines format and after following steps correctly and then running the ULP the command keeps running and no result is achieved.
Will you please dig into it??
Let me guess you’re using latest Eagle CAD version right ? If yes, then that’s right the script enters a loop, if you want test the current version you should use Eagle 7.x to run it without problems.
For some reason, the new Eagle CAD team (after Autodesk acquisition) has changed something in ULP, I try to find what is it from release notes but I couldn’t find any thing useful. I will try to fix that this weekend. Keep an eye on this page.
Good news, I’ve tested the ULP with Eagle V9.3 and it’s working again. Some version of V8.x has something making the ULP not working as intended. So please use V7.x or >V9 to run this ULP.