Re: gEDA-user: pcb DRC

[timecop <timecop@xxxxxxxxx>]

>> 1. You have silkscreen printing going right through most of your
>> pads. How do you plan to solder to that?
>
> The silk is not going to be printed, it is only for the assembly
> drawing.  I gave up on silk at this density.  For a dense flight board I
> once had the silk printed, but without the names, and masked by the
> soldermask layer.
I've seen (and made) much higher density boards with silk on it.
Poor excuse. People soldering those close-up components will not know
where to orient it and have to refer to your "assembly drawing". FAIL.
If youre not printing refdes thats fine, but not printing silk outline
for at least R/C/L is silly.
Imagine the following arrangement of parts on a board:
R1 R2 C1
R1 R2 C1
2 resistors and a cap vertically
however nothing will stop a newb from soldering a resistor between
R1->R2 instead of R1-R1 pads, if you dont have that outline there.

>> 2. Many of your parts are placed *extremely* close together.
>> Certainly a pick and place machine won't be able to handle it.  Hand
>> placing may be difficult. I'm not sure if you'll be able to solder to
>> them.
Too close what? Those are 0603 components? No problem unless the pads are wrong.
Close is when you have like 8mil spacing between 0402 components with
pads that barely extend. And even then why would a pick and place have
trouble with components close together? Maybe you didn't know, but it
has a nozzle that is generally SMALLER then component its picking up,
and goes up a few mm until the rest of the head begins, so unless
youre talking about like a 0402 resistor sitting right next to a some
tall component,, and even then the operator would know this and have
the bigger component placed later...

> Well, yes, we will manage ...  but If I go for 0402s instead of 0603s,
> the techs will complain even more.
Anything > like 20 components you're better off just getting a stencil.

>> 3. On the signal layer, you have a big copper ring going along the
>> perimeter, unconnected to anything.  That is not a good idea.  Maybe
>> you intended this to be a ground guard ring?  If so, it should connect
>> to ground.

> It is connected.  It is the power return for the front-end, going from
> one connector (power board) to the other (premap board).  So, it is
> actually on ground potential, when the front end is plugged in, and
> there is a resistor (R3) on this board for when it is not.

I would check more but seems pcb.exe is bringing down my new core
i7-860 to its knees while scrolling even such a simple design around.

Oh well, such is life.


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