I have tried searching the site for the answer, but could find a post that said “This is exactly how you do it”.
So here comes my question:
I have 6 completely different boards combined into one production file.
The “global” file has rectangular borders, and so do the 6 boards that it consists of.
I am using CadSoft Eagle.
Which layer do I use so that the fabhouse cuts these boards apart for me?
In other words, so that I receive 6 boards and not all of them combined in one piece.
Currently I am using outlines in both the Dimension and Milling layers to specify borders of each of the boards. And leaving at least 30mils on each side.
Which layer is the “correct” one to use for the purpose?
sparky:
As long as you have a complete border around each design, they will be treated as individual designs and cut-apart as such.
And yet, the question of HOW GP determines the board edges has never been adequately answered on this forum. Since the “dimension” layer is never submitted to the BOT, how can GP know where the board edges are? And they DO know, somehow. I’ve gotten boards back with perfect dimensions, even tohugh they dimension layer was never submitted.
Actually, I think it has to be inherent in the panel gerber that SFE sends to GP. If you look at gerbmerge (nice piece of free SW), it can produce a “route layer” (they call it vscore, same thing though). I assume that SFEs software produces something similar. I doubt that GP does anything other than route to the outlines that SFE gives them.
I think you must be including your outline somewhere (silk layers?).
By the way, Gerbmerge defaults to a 128 mil seperation between panelized pcbs.
It would be impossible to submit the full dimensional information for each board.
I don’t entirely know how they determine the borders, but here’s what I’ve seen:
Boards with no border are routed square to the nearest, non-altering border (they avoid the traces, holes ,etc).
Boards with multiple borders (keepout is one shape, overlay is another, copper is another) they will route to outer most shape.
Boards with a complex border (the top overlay makes the border, or keepout makes the border, or copper makes the border) they will route pretty much anything. Someone really needs to post images of their fancy boards. We’ve seen quite a few.
I’m almost positive it’s a human looking at our gerbers and determining the board borders. So as long as you make it obvious in the 7 basic layers, you’ll get a route.
Oh we do. It’s not too bad now that the DRC bot takes care of all the checking.
We still get customers with mis-aligned drill files. But 80% of the time we just pack 'em in as much as possible with about 50-100mil between designs. Pausing to email the customer and canceling orders takes more time than the actual gerber placement.
Sparky, what software do you use to panelize the orders?
I tried using gerbmerge but after viewing the output I can’t tell what the routes will be. My PCBs have little cutouts in each corner, but gerbmerge seems to make a big rectangular route around each PCB in addition to the PCB’s route. And none of the routes have any names so I don’t know what the ones generated by gerbmerge represent.
I’m just wondering if there’s a software package that will do panelization in a clearer manner so I can know if my PCBs are going to come back as rectangles or properly cut…
gerbmerge will produce a border layer that shows all the board outlines in the panel. I believe it is the .bor file. I’ve made my point of view on this topic known.
lol