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Exporting Manufacturing Packages from Altium Designer

This guide details how to generate and export production-ready manufacturing packages from Altium Designer for automated DFM analysis, BOM sourcing risk detection, and client sign-off in BoardReadyOps.

Required Files Checklist

A complete Altium manufacturing package zip bundle must include:

  1. Gerber Files (RS-274X):
  2. Top & Bottom Copper (.gtl, .gbl or .g1, .g2, etc.)
  3. Top & Bottom Solder Mask (.gts, .gbs)
  4. Top & Bottom Silkscreen (.gto, .gbo)
  5. Board Outline / Mechanical Layer (.gm1 or .gko)
  6. NC Drill Files (Excellon):
  7. Plated and unplated drill holes (.drl or .txt)
  8. Bill of Materials (BOM):
  9. CSV or Excel (.csv) with columns: Designator, Comment (or Description), Manufacturer Part Number (MPN), Footprint, Quantity.
  10. Pick-and-Place Centroid:
  11. Text or CSV (.csv or .txt) with: Designator, Mid X, Mid Y, Rotation, Layer.

Step 1: Export Gerber RS-274X Files

  1. Open your PCB document (.PcbDoc) in Altium Designer.
  2. Select File > Fabrication Outputs > Gerber Files.
  3. In the General tab:
  4. Units: Inches or Millimeters
  5. Format: 2:4 (Inches) or 2:5 (Millimeters)
  6. In the Layers tab:
  7. Click Plot Layers and select Used On.
  8. Ensure the board outline layer (e.g. Mechanical 1) is selected.
  9. In the Apertures tab:
  10. Check Embedded apertures (RS274X).
  11. Click OK to generate the Gerber files into your project output directory (/Project Outputs/).

Step 2: Export NC Drill Files

  1. In the same PCB document, select File > Fabrication Outputs > NC Drill Files.
  2. Configure settings matching your Gerber output:
  3. Units: Match the Gerber units (Inches or Millimeters).
  4. Format: Match Gerber format (e.g. 2:4 or 2:5).
  5. Zero Suppression: Suppress leading zeroes or keep trailing zeroes consistently.
  6. Click OK, then click OK in the Drill Drawing configuration dialog.
  7. Altium outputs .TXT or .DRL files.

Step 3: Export Pick-and-Place Centroids

  1. Select File > Assembly Outputs > Generates pick and place files.
  2. Choose CSV format.
  3. Units: Metric or Imperial.
  4. Click OK. Altium will create Pick Place for <Project>.csv.

Step 4: Export Structured Bill of Materials (BOM)

  1. Select Reports > Bill of Materials.
  2. In the BOM configuration window:
  3. Ensure Designator, Comment, Manufacturer Part Number, Footprint, and Quantity columns are enabled.
  4. Set Export Format to CSV.
  5. Click Export and save as bom.csv.

Step 5: Bundle and Ingest

  1. Place the generated Gerber files, NC Drill file, BOM CSV, and Centroid file into a single .zip archive: bash zip -r altium_release_v1.zip Gerbers/ bom.csv pick_place.csv
  2. Upload the archive directly via the BoardReadyOps web wizard or CLI: bash boardreadyops review --archive altium_release_v1.zip --cad altium