Hi,
In Eagle, I have been creating a footprint for each of the enclosures I use. The footprint defines the dimensions of the board, as well as holes for the mounting points of the PCB in the enclosure.
This allows reusing precise outlines that fit commercial enclosures.
This only works when the board fits the whole area of the enclosure. I am reusing an enclosure for an application where the PCB cannot take the whole space in the enclosure, i.e. the PCB has to allow some space for external connectors.
I then need to alter the footprint I had created for the enclosures.
I though I could explode the footprint of the enclosure (once placed in the layout view), though I realize this only allows moving the name/value layers. Dimension, tPlace etc… These layers cannot seem to be moved once part of a footprint…
At this point I am considering defining each segment of the board outline as name/value, then manually converting them to dimensions once in the layout… But this looks very uggly.
What are your thoughts? Regarding this? How do you handle the dimension layer?
Thanks!