Re: gEDA-user: Making an odd-shaped PCB

[msokolov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Sokolov)]

Hello again,

Thanks to all who have answered my question!

I have created a layer named "outline" and drawn the board outline there
with 10 mil copper lines as DJ Delorie has indicated.

I've also done the following trick.  Recall that my board looks like
this (smaller version of the ASCII art drawing):

+--------+------+
|        |      |
|        |      |
|        +------+
|        |
|        |
+--------+

Well, the above is actually how *I* prefer to visualise it visually.
Physically the PCB looks like this:

+---------------+
|               |
|               |
|        +------+
|        |
|        |
+--------+

The 2nd picture is what I want the PCB house to see (so that they don't
cut where they shouldn't), but while doing the layout I prefer to see
the 1st picture on my screen.  Reason: this PCB is essentially two
separate pieces juxtaposed together.  The part on the left is where the
entire functional circuit is laid out, including the DC power input
connector.  The part on the right is the completely independent AC mains
section that takes AC power from an IEC 320 kettle plug and carries it
to an internal connector for the open frame power supply that sits in
the cutout.  That part could have been implemented with a panel-mounted
mains entry and omitted from the PCB altogether.  So I prefer to think
of the functional section and the AC mains section as completely
separate, hence the desire to see a line separating them.

What I have done is I've drawn picture 1 on the outline layer, and when
I'm done with the layout, just before generating the gerbers I'll edit
the pcb file and shorten one of the lines to transform picture 1 into
picture 2.

MS


_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user