My apologies if this has been covered elsewhere; I saw a few people ask this question, but missed any answers.
I’m trying to submit my first design using OrCAD Layout 10. Once I went in to the layer setup and told it to only post-process the correct six layers (including the bottom silkscreen, which was off by default), I ended up with files that were accepted by the DRC, except I kept getting the “Drill Points not detected” error.
I went and looked at http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorial/PCB/Custom-PCB-FAQ.htm (which you can’t get to off the main page anymore? boo.), which showed an example DRD file. (The “veg.drd” file.) That file looks almost like the thruhole.tap file that OrCAD generated; however, even though it loads correctly in ViewMate :(, the OrCAD-generated file gets rejected by the BatchBot with the above error message.
My thruhole.tap file looked like this:
%
T1C0.0280F200S100
X-038500Y015500
X-038250Y016500
[...]
X-018000Y017500
T3C0.0340F200S100
X-033500Y024250
[...]
X-015500Y027250
T4C0.0380F200S100
X-037000Y014500
[...]
X-016750Y012750
T5C0.0420F200S100
X-034500Y030750
[...]
X-015500Y030750
T2C0.0310F200S100
X-023075Y017325
X-023075Y018175
M30
So, in order to make my drill file look like veg.drd, I opened it up in a text editor, and took every “T…” line, and copied it to the top. The file ended up looking like:
%
T1C0.0280F200S100
T2C0.0310F200S100
T3C0.0340F200S100
T4C0.0380F200S100
T5C0.0420F200S100
T6C0.0540F200S100
T1C0.0280F200S100
X-038500Y015500
X-038250Y016500
X-037000Y015500
[...]
Since both files rendered correctly in ViewMate, maybe this is just a bug in the DRC robot? (Which is, aside from that, very impressive.)
Hopefully this saves someone some time!
Ben
You haven’t quite got it right
See this good drill file -
%M48 starts off the header where the drills are defined, where the sizes are assigned to a label
Then after the next % the drill label by itself is written and then listed all the coordinates after that
%
M48
T01C0.024
T02C0.028
T03C0.032
T04C0.036
T05C0.040
%
T01
X377Y296
X377Y446
X552Y196
X677Y446
X777Y896
X727Y1021
X702Y1121
X902Y1071
X1052Y871
X1052Y746
X1127Y546
X1002Y296
X1302Y296
X1302Y446
X1102Y1021
X1102Y1071
X1052Y1346
X1027Y1571
X1052Y1721
X1102Y1846
X1102Y1896
X902Y1896
X752Y1721
X677Y1971
X552Y2371
X377Y2421
X377Y2621
X677Y2621
X1002Y2421
X1127Y2546
X1302Y2496
X1302Y2621
X1202Y2246
T02
X1317Y2121
X1387Y2121
X1387Y1946
X1317Y1946
X1317Y1296
X1387Y1296
X1387Y1121
X1317Y1121
T03
X1327Y836
X1327Y756
X1402Y471
X1402Y271
X890Y271
X890Y471
X277Y471
X277Y271
X1327Y1581
X1327Y1661
X1402Y2421
X1502Y2596
X1402Y2621
X890Y2621
X890Y2421
X277Y2421
X277Y2621
T04
X277Y2671
X277Y2371
X852Y1546
X952Y1546
X892Y2371
X892Y2671
X1402Y2671
X1402Y2371
X952Y721
X852Y721
X890Y521
X890Y221
X1402Y221
X1402Y521
X277Y521
X277Y221
T05
X152Y321
X152Y421
X552Y946
X552Y1046
X552Y1146
X552Y1246
X552Y1346
X552Y1646
X552Y1746
X552Y1846
X552Y1946
X152Y2471
X152Y2571
X1127Y1446
X1227Y1446
X1327Y1446
X1302Y1796
X1402Y1796
X1502Y1796
X1602Y2421
X1602Y2521
X1602Y2621
X1502Y971
X1402Y971
X1302Y971
X1602Y496
X1602Y396
X1602Y296
M30
Actually, I tried rewriting it to look like that first (that is to say, M48 header, the drill defs, and then actually deleting the drill info from each “section”), and that worked too. I experimented, and found that it was sufficient (as far as the DRC bot is concerned) just to copy the references to the top.
I’m assuming all will actually work correctly, since all three rendered identically in ViewMate.
Ben