gEDA-user: Multiple copies of single, small board

[Mike Bushroe <mbushroe@xxxxxxxxx>]

   I have been working with a High School Robotics team, trying to teach
   them how to design their own circuits using gschem and board layouts
   using PCB Fab in a Box to etch the boards. But no one practiced before
   the workshop, so no one got to see their board own board made. To make
   up for that, I made a nice, tight layout of the 12 blinking LEDs, and
   I want to make 20 copies of it in one run to send to them to practice
   soldering, and so that we can all have identical blinking lights at
   the robotics competitions.
      However, I could not find a way to get PCB to export the layout in
   Postscript and have it tile part of the page with multiple copies. So
   I tried using GIMP and I got so frustrated trying to align the pasted
   in masks that I gave up on Gimp and tried Open Office Draw. That
   didn't work either so I went to OO Word Processor. Even there I could
   find no way to align the 20 copies in 4 rows of 5 each without drawing
   temporary lines, moving them by hand, and removing the lines.
      So my first question, does any one know what I was doing wrong in
   Gimp that I could not get 20 copies of the mask in 4 neat, even rows
   of 5 spaced, level (for most room between to cut them out) pastes of
   the solder side mask?
      The more appropriate question for this forum is: Should we add a
   three more questions to the Post Script export dialog box.
   1) how many copies tiled across do you want, default to 1
   2) how many copies tiled down do you want, default to 1
   3 what spacing between rows do you want, default to 100 mills, not
   used if previous value is one
      I am sure that I am not the only one that want to etch more than
   one copy of a simple board at once. I assume that if I cut-n-paste
   within PCB, that it will have to increment the refdes names otherwise
   the netlist becomes wonky. And it would like to send these out with
   simple, step-by-step instructions on how to build them, and that won't
   work of the silkscreen numbers are different on every one.
   Mike


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