SparkFun Forums

[ichabody]

PC board assembly houses require a centroid file (or x-y file) in order to program their pick-and-place machines.

Is such a centroid file automatically generated within EAGLE? If so, which file is it?

If not, how is such a file created using EAGLE data?

[Ross Robotics]

I've never heard that the customer has to supply this file.. You send the Gerbers and they program their own machines..

[ichabody]

I have been asked by two assembly houses to supply an x-y file.

They claim that it will save them time = $$$$, which I end up paying for no matter what.

[InactiveUser001]

All assembly houses usually require a X\Y placement file, if you do not provide one then they will have to make one which as ichabody says - ends up costing you.

If you only provide board data as Gerber then there is no placement data in it so the file is needed, if you can provide something like ODB++ then it's included in it.

Have you d tried Googling the question? you could have come up with several answers such as:
http://cirqwizard.org/docs/preparation/gerber.html
Also :

You can run mountsmd.ulp
You can access it on the layout view, File > run ULP
it will generate .mnt (mount top) and .mnb (mount bottom). It is a text file that stores coordinates of origin of a component

They will ignore the rotation in the file and check that themselves, A silkscreen or component placement drawing will assist with this, if anything is polarized then the drawing needs to show it.

[ichabody]

Dear mattylad,

Thanks for the insight and suggestions.

After I sent my last email, I checked with Cadsoft USA and they told me to download mountsmd.ulp. I did, but then I discovered that it was already present in EAGLE 7.0 in the ulp directory.

That should do the trick for me.