Can I convert Gerber X1 to Gerber X2 or Gerber X3?

Question

I have Gerber files (.pho and .fph) files provided by the customer. I do not have pcb schematic and pcb design for this board. I need to convert these Gerber files to Gerber X3 format. For a PCB which I have designed, I can export the design file to Gerber X2. But the customer has provided only Gerber files to us which I need to convert to Gerber X3. What can I do to achieve this? Is this possible in KICAD? If not, is there any tool which I can use for this?

Answer 1

KiCAD comes with the gerbviewer program, which can open gerber files, and export them to a KiCAD PCB. With the KiCAD PCB editor (pcbnew), you can then re-export them as X3.

However: X3 has no advantages for you, at all. The only thing it offers over base extended Gerber is the option to add metadata, and especially component properties, to elements in the layout.

However, since you only have the X1 files to go from, there's no such information to add. It's been lost at the point the board layout was exported as X1 by your customer.

So, while technically possible to achieve, the X3 file you produce would not differ from the X1 file functionally. So, since anything that reads Gerber X3 would be able to read X1 as well (these later versions being extensions), I don't see any benefit to what you want to do.