Re: gEDA-user: a pcb level panelizer tool

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I do production work and always need multiple panels to complete a
> job.  So there is no point to putting more than one board on a
> panel.

If that's what you do, why do you need to panelize it yourself?  Just
ask the fab to make N boards and let them fit them to their panels as
best they can.  They know how much space to leave between them for
V-scoring or tab routing.

However, panelizing at the pcb level gives you access to all the
standard tools for your panel, though, like BOM and X/Y output for
pick and place, panel-level drill reports, panel prints, fab drawings,
etc.  It also lets you add alignment holes, margin notes, margins,
etc.

Step and repeat panelizing means that EVERY tool and report needs to
know what the step and repeat factors are, and need to implement a
step and repeat feature within them.  That's a waste of effort and
prone to errors.

> Other than the width of the rout around the board,

Which is exactly what I'm talking about.

> My goal is to automate as much as possible and to eliminate any sort
> of manual work, including running script files.

If it's scriptable, you can automate it.  You can't reliably automate
pointing and clicking, and with our type of panelization, you can
store the whole panel in source control as-is and not need to
re-panelize it (or remember your panelization settings) later.

> That's great.  But for straight forward work of building a panel of 
> the same board repeated, there is no point to using scripts when the 
> layout tool should produce the Gerber files for you.

Should?  For someone who wants to take the risk of errors away from
humans, you're relying on them too much.  A script can be automated
*outside* the scope of the layout engineer's access.  The group
responsible for panelizing and fabbing should do that post-processing
by a smart script which knows the panelizing rules, not by one of many
layout engineers.

> For the work I do, I need tools that facilitate productivity and
> minimize the risk of errors.  I prefer to use tools that do the job
> simply and effectively without unnecessary manual steps.  I think a
> step and repeat option should be in any good layout tool.

If you feel that strongly about it, go ahead and add it.  I wrote a
panelizer.  You can panelize using a pcb script.  There's at least one
other panelizer.  No reason not to have more.  You can even store the
panelizing parameters in the pcb file as board-level attributes if you
want.  Heck, write a plug-in for managing those parameters, and add a
hook in the gerber exporter to read them and add the line you want.
That's where the power of open source comes in - if you don't like it,
you can change it, and everyone benefits.

If I were a layout engineer at your company, I'd want to keep my board
in a source control system, and use some internal web server to submit
it for panelizing (the server reads the board from source control,
avoiding the risk that the layout guy submits an uncontrolled file),
rather than even consider doing it myself.


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