How to Reverse Engineer a PCB from Gerber Files

How do you reverse-engineer a PCB from Gerber files? Tech Consultant Zach Peterson walks you through the process, using a variety of methods, including via CAMtastic in Altium Designer (free trial link below).
0:00 Intro
0:43 Inputs: Gerbers, .DRLs, and...Netlist?
3:40 DXF to CAD?
7:44 Bypassing DXF with CAMtastic
12:55 Export to PCB
23:16 Cleaning Up the Layout
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[@dharmikmistry8781]

Thanks for creating video on this topic. indeed needed.

[@superjimnz]

I did this for a board once having only the information required to build it (gerber, drill, bom); if I recall, after the camtastic import I went through creating components from the exploded primitives (in PCB lib). Create the components' schematic symbols from the BOM and put them all on the schematic with an individual netlabel on each pin. Then push changes back from PCB->schematic, now you will have all the right nets on your schematic symbols. The final process is to untangle and rename the schematic into something readable, always ensuring that when you push changes to the board no connectivity is changed (just net renames).
Note that all your holes are imported as "pads", so you will need to convert the vias back.
I have also employed the more laborious method to reverse engineer a supposedly "open source" 3D printer motherboard. It was possible to extract all layers from the PDF layout they provided (using select by colour in a drawing tool, as all 4 layers were present, though overlapping). After scaling to correct known dimensions I had enough to reconstruct the layout. In this case the schematic was provided as a PDF, so there was less mystery there.

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

I watched Ethan Pierce's webinar with PCEA and he talked about using photoshop to extract copper from a photograph of the top layer. If you can get the copper to a single color with smoothed edges then you can basically do the same thing, just select by color and then scale based on a known reference dimension.

[@yuxuanhuang3523]

Could a function to select PADS and group them into a conponent be seen in future versions? Some CAM software does this automatically and figures out the footprint for you. For example, simple SOP packages and BGA are really easy to recognize, should be able just to box select the pads and group, then probably manually match to a certain footprint.

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

That's a great idea, I don't have visibility into all of the new features that are coming up for newer versions but it would be great to see this. I know that you can select free pads in the PCB Editor and copy them into a new window or component footprint in a PCB library, but unfortunately you can't just grab component pads and copy them into a new window or part. You would have to explode a component to free primitives and then copy to a new part. Once the pads are in a new editor you could overlay with a known good footprint to compare the pad arrangement and identify the component package.

[@87Spectr]

Great!

[@markworkman6544]

very cool........

[@karrartalib8279]

when I try to extract the netlist it gives this error "One or more layer types are not defined". However, I can see that all of my layers are defined!

[@henrychan720]

Depending on how complex the PCB is, it probably makes more sense to send it to China and have the professionals do it for you.

[@yuxuanhuang3523]

Yep, and they would sand the board down and scan it for you. It is basically fully manual reproduction of every component. I once kinda half reverse-engineered a two layer PCB just by taking a photo, scaling it up and printing it out. Then I just drew marker lines. I had some idea of what it did, so it was pretty simple.

[@thiaihoc4472]

you have any contact to the Chinese professionals?

[@danieljimenez-fv8gt]

I did this, but when I finished it the holes showed like a pad but without holes, I only got 4 layers, not all, do you know the reason?

[@telumanasa209]

am trying after export the pcb silk and solder layers are not visible in panel downwards.

[@LouietheHog]

I'm having the same issue and cant seem to find the right way to even search for a solution. I can toggle visibility in the view configuration toolbar, but cannot select them as an active layer to work on.

[@user-wd1lu5oi3x]

hi Jack, I tried to design this with a GitHub file but Netlist isn't generating and lacks the option for the copper layer to fix the layers.

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

I'd like to help but unfortunately without seeing the design files I cannot suggest a fix, what is the name of the GitHub repo?

[@dimonasua]

Hi Zack, I have tried this with a real project. I have generated a netlist in the Camtastic editor, export to PCB was also successful. But PCBs netlist is empty after export. Is it the same for you?

[@dimonasua]

To be precise: I see net names over tracks, but in PCB panel Nets is empty.

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

I think this is because the process does not regenerate the schematics, which is what you would normally use as the reference to generate a netlist. I don't think the nets panel should be empty though, I would have to try again with the project and check it.

[@lapchinov]

When i am trying to Export to PCB i see an error: The physical layers order wasnt defined. Please define the physical order of signal / plane layers before proceeding. But i I didn't find this setting in the preferences of CAM editor

[@jacobdoyle4861]

I was performing this operation on a 4-layer board. after clicking Tools->Netlist->Extract I was prompted with the same error and had to fill out the "Physical Order" of the layers 1-4. After the netlist was extracted, I could then export to a PCB.

[@lapchinov]

@@jacobdoyle4861 I filled out the "Physical Order" in CAM350. Is it possible to do this in altium?

[@user-cm9yf8jb5n]

I can't make the x .y ​​distances between components on a PCB

[@shahrukhp3355]

When i am trying to to extract netlist this error i am geeting..

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

What specifically is the error you see?

[@dunk_law]

There is much more work to do.

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

Yes of course there is more work, but this gets you to an actual PCB layout file that you can start using to recreate the board.