Re: gEDA-user: any last minute advice prior to sending out for PCB fab

[Geoff Swan <shinobi.jack@xxxxxxxxx>]

> don't even consider ordering boards without loading up the photoplot files
> into something like gerbv and doing some sanity checks.  This advice applies
> to a design done with any layout tool and not just pcb. A minimal list would
> be:
>
> - From 20,000 feet, does each layer look right or are there glaring errors
> like a big missing chunk of a ground plane.
>
> - On your plane layer(s), make sure that you see some pins/vias that go
> through the plane *without* connecting.  Now make sure you see some that
> *do* connect.  Yes, I have seen a case where someone (not me) ordered a
> board that had exactly 0 connections to the ground plane.  All thermals were
> missing. Didn't work so well.

As another interesting aside - not likely to happen if you're using
gEDA - a tech in the company I work for sent off a pcb design in the
raw Altium pcb format (ie - not the generated gerb files). This was a
not uncommon practice as Altium was considered *industry standard* and
every pcb fab house we deal with has a copy. In this case however the
fab house opened the designs in a slightly older version than what the
files were generated in. AFTER the boards were fabbed AND populated it
was discovered that due to the difference in version a whole bunch of
nets had been fused to various power planes. The whole thing was
fubar. Expensively fubar. The pcb fab house were not at fault as we
hadn't specified which version of Altium had been used etc etc. There
are a multitude of serious process errors involved in how the build
was handled... if you follow what has been discussed so far I don't
think you will have the same problems.

Geoff


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