GC-Prevue organises the information in a board’s data set in the form of two kinds of layers, physical layers and data layers.
Physical layers
A physical layer represents a physical surface of the board. It consists of a variety of ‘types’ of data that include electrical circuits, solder masks and silk screens, plus many other types. Physical layers are also defined by ‘attributes’, which further define their characteristics. For example, an electrical layer may have the attributes of being a top or bottom, plated or unplated layer. The simplest type of single-sided board could consist of one physical layer. A physical layer consists of one or more data layers that have been assigned to it. When you create a new physical layer in GC Explorer, it contains no data and is considered ‘empty’. Until you assign it a data layer, you cannot set the physical layer’s editability. You can create an empty physical layer, then create for it a data layer, and set that layer to Edit, View or Hide using the data layer’s property page.
Data layers
A data layer represents information about a board data set that may or may not yet have been assigned to a physical layer. All information that becomes physical information on a board is also contained in a data layer.
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