At 11:02 PM 9/16/2008, you wrote:
Hmmm... re-reading the thread, we are mainly talking about a regular
panelizer. Too many threads! ;-)
Why panelize in pcb? It covers the drill file. it lets you edit the
panel before printing. It's free and we already have it. You can
panelize more than one layout onto a single panel (you can't do that
with plain step and repeat). You can edit the boards while they're
in-panel (for example, I tweak drills before printing).
Panelizing by editing the gerbers is difficult to script, too, and a
pain to maintain. It's like trying to make corrections to a document
by editing the postscript output.
I have not followed PCB enough to understand the issues with these
tools, but I wouldn't think that an output file would need to be
edited. The file can be generated correctly in the first
place. Shouldn't the tool generate the Gerber files as they are
needed for building panels? This is all that is needed to be added by PCB...
G04 Step and Repeat for panelization *
%SRX2Y11I5.000000J1.100000*%
This repeats the rest of the G-codes into an array of 2 x 11 with a
spacing of 5 x 1.1 inches.
FreePCB has an option in the CAM output dialog to panelize the Gerber
files to be output. Then the appropriate line or two of RS-274X code
can be output as part of the Gerber files. One of the users of
FreePCB contributed a post layout tool to take an existing FreePCB
file and duplicate it in ways that would produce a full panel. But I
see no point in doing this if the tool does it in the first
place. If you tell the tool you want a panel it can display the
layout showing the full panel without having to actually put
duplicated parts and traces into the file. This just bloats the file
size, especially the size of the Gerber files.
As to "tweeking" drill sizes, I don't get what you mean. Why would I
want to tweek a drill size on just one of N boards in a panel? In
fact, this shows the problem with copying features to panelize a
board. Once you have done the panelize step, any changes require you
to delete all work of panelizing and do it again after you make the
change. Shouldn't the software deal with that for you by just
allowing you to specify the panel rather than creating it by copying stuff?
I don't know what PCB currently supports. I just know how I expect a
layout program to work. One of the problems with FreePCB is that it
doesn't provide all of the required files for fabrication and
assembly. There doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in making it do
what is required. Rather I get suggestions on how to hand edit files
to produce XYRS centroid files and such. So for my next project, I
am looking for a tool that is more complete and works efficiently (by
that I mean does not require *ME* to do the kind of work a computer can do).
Rick
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