Re: gEDA-user: Component placement in PCB

[Daniel Nilsson <daniel@oden.homeip.net>]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 07:14:47PM -0800, Stephen Meier wrote:
> Yes make the PCB work area larger then the board. The extra area is 
> usefull for organizing parts and rotating them after the board area 
> becomes dense. After you have finshed routing then reduce the PCB are to 
> the size required for the board.
> 

Yes, this works well when placing the components on the board for the
first time. I found it to not work so well when you add more
components to a already routed design. The issue I ran into was that
it was very difficult to find a big enough area on the PCB to bring in
the additional components to wihout any of the pads hooking up to
existing etch. I guess the way to do this would be to increase the
size of the PCB every time before adding more components, which is a
little weird way of working.

Would it be possible to have PCB accept components placed outside the
board edges ? What would be involved in supporting that ?

Thanks
-- 
Daniel Nilsson