Re: gEDA-user: Making a board: what's next?

[Ben Jackson <ben@xxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 11:26:35AM -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> 
> > (1) How do I mark drill holes for mounting the fabricated board? Are 
> > they just vias?
> 
> You can do it with vias or real symbols.

Keep in mind that most fabs will charge more for non-plated holes (since
it requires a second drilling pass) so either your holes will all be plated
or you will get a surprise charge for your non-plated holes.  So even if
you make a special 'hole footprint', satisfy the via design rules for
annular ring etc.

> > (2) How do I indicate the size of the board?  Right now I just drew a 
> > silkscreen border.
> 
> Two ways.  For simple boards, set the board size in the "board sizes"
> dialog (edit->board sizes for lesstif).

If you want to do that, get my autocrop plugin (you can find it on
gedasymbols).  It will move and resize your board in one step.  However,
since nothing can extend outside the board area, if you have connectors
that hang over the edge with silk that reflects the outline, you will
not be able to shrink the PCB board to the physical board size.

> Otherwise, rename one of the unused layers to "outline" and draw your
> outline on that.  This layer is treated slightly special, in that it
> will use it to draw the outline on your fabrication drawing.

Just draw a 10mil line and specify in the README you include that the
board edge is the center of that line.  That's typical.

> > (3) The next step if fabrication, can a company like pcbexpress.com
> > handle output from the gEDA suite? Or are there other companies
> > known to be gEDA-friendly?

In addition to the places DJ listed, I sent a board to custompcb.
You can see exactly what I sent (zipfile) at http://ad7gd.net/flex/

-- 
Ben Jackson AD7GD
<ben@xxxxxxx>
http://www.ben.com/


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