Online PCB Submission Service - Development Update [2/8/05]

ok new feature, unused apertures are not checked for compliance and aperture numbering is the same as the gerber file’s. I will add the latter feature to the drill file checking saturday.

There is a known bug which i am trying to understand, basically if you have a layer with the aperture 101 then the DRC records this as being 01, and when checking for useage looks for the ‘statement’ D01 (which is a gerber command). This makes errors when aperture numbering of 110+ is used, as this will be recorded as 10, the same as the first user defined aperture, and so if 110 ‘fails’ but is not used, it will still generate an error if 10 is used.

This should not affect too many users, as 100+ apertures is rare. Some softwares define all apertures even if not used in the design at all, just defult.

Anyhow, that took about 3 hours / 200 ish more lines and a 20% increase in computing time, lol.

Martyn,

I found another thing that you may consider adding to the online DRC. I had a board that passed DRC but failed Ben’s DRC. The problem wasn’t in any traces, it was the spacing between pads on an IC. I don’t know if the onine DRC checks for this or if my file happened to fall through the cracks.

I have tried to do that, but it requires graphically drawing the pads and then checking them.

It is one thing that my checker cannot do, although most PCB creation systems which might produce this error should have DRC functions…