I should have known better!!

Community PCB Design
1

Well… send a design to batchpcb and got the board back ok but no wire traces, just holes with compoment names on the board. Anyone have an idea what I did wrong or where to look… Thanks

2

You forgot to send the Gerber files for the top and bottom layers? Or, they didn’t include them when they did the panelisation. It’s strange, though; all the suppliers I deal with would call me if any files were missing, or just redo the boards if it was their fault. The problem should have been picked up on final inspection.

Leon

3

I did send the necessary files OK… but I noticed on the sfe_cam job they have the bottom layer turn off as default…I turned on and it told me I have more than 1 signal layer actrive. So I’m assumming I need to have that on also. Does that sound correct?

4

I don’t know, I’ve never used BatchPCB. It takes too long for me.

Leon

5

That certainly seems odd. When you got the confirmation email back from the drc bot, did the image show the copper tracks?

It should have looked something like:

http://randomskk.net/projects/led_matrix/rev06/top.png

Note the green connections between pads.

If these weren’t shown, it seems likely you didn’t send the correct copper layers (though why there would be component pads still boggles me).

Are you sure the tracks aren’t just hidden by the solder mask? Have you tried using a multimeter to see if the right pads are connected to each other?

p.s. leon_heller, please don’t hate on the board design, it’s an example image only! (though it did work fine when made)

6

athnetix:
Well… send a design to batchpcb and got the board back ok but no wire traces, just holes with compoment names on the board. Anyone have an idea what I did wrong or where to look… Thanks

I do not know what happened here.But to avoid such problems, this is what I do:

Once I am done with making a library. I print that components and place the physical component on it. This way I am sure that the pads are excatly the sizes that are needed.

Once I am done with a board design, I again print the layout. I make sure that everything that I expect is there on the printout and again check by placing the physical components on the layout to see if everything is ok.

When I am ready to send the gerber files, I make a list of the files and send them along. So far no problems.