Create Gerber file from antenna design

The ultimate goal is to be able to print the actual size antenna on paper and also create a Gerber file for PCB manufacturing. I thought that the following four functions would do the trick, but as you can see I am stuck on the second one (pcbStack):

ant = spiralArchimedean('Turns',6, ...
                        'InnerRadius',12e-4, ...
                        'OuterRadius',975e-4, ...
                        'Tilt',0, ...
                        'TiltAxis',[0 0 1]);
p = pcbStack(ant);
PC = PCBWriter(p);
gerberWrite(PC);

The error is thrown:

Error using pcbStack/parsePcbStack (line 1447)
Expected a string scalar or character vector for the parameter name, instead the input type
was 'spiralArchimedean'.
 
Error in pcbStack (line 178)
            parsePcbStack(obj,varargin{:});

Answer 1

[Da Huang]

Hi,

You need to specify a substrate in order to generate the gerber file. Please see the following code.

ant = spiralArchimedean('Turns',6, ...

'InnerRadius',12e-4, ...

'OuterRadius',975e-4, ...

'Tilt',0, ...

'TiltAxis',[0 0 1]);

r = reflector('Exciter',ant,'Substrate',dielectric('fr4'))

r.Spacing = 0.025;

p = pcbStack(r);

p.gerberWrite