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Topic: Making Holes in a Board... Confusion (Read 1593 times) previous topic - next topic

Making Holes in a Board... Confusion

Hello Forum -

so far everything with DPCB has been straightforward and awesome. every board ive sent out has been fantastic and quicker than id expected.

I am currently confused about the proper way to  make non-drill holes in the board. for instance if i needed to cut a triangle out of the middle of the board, or even an elliptical hole.... etc...At the center of my confusion, are some statements from the "About" section regarding slots and board outlines.

Im just trying to learn the right way to do things in DPCB world so i ask for your kindness ahead of time.


Quote
    TXT            Routing and Drill (the holes and slots)

 I have no idea how to get anything other than drill holes to come out of eagle in the TXT (drill) file.. and according to quote any slots (or non -circular holes?)  need to go in this file.  i dont know how to do this... is it as simple as drawing a wire or shape on drills layer (44)?

Quote
Multiple outlines: if you include multiple board outlines in your file, the industry standard dictates that the SMALLEST OUTLINE will be used.

in the past the way i have  cut irregular shapes/holes in the board is to use the #20 Dimensions layer, which basically dumps out to the GML/GKO file. what i always think of as the milling file.  but this quote, makes me feel like  for DPCB submissions there should be only one shape on the #20 layer (and thusly in the GML file) and that shape should be the outline of the board... 


at any rate, ive submitted this HOLE_TEST_V1 file (attached) to see how things go. maybe someone here will look at them and  can shed some light on whats gonna happen.  Does anyone know...  will the results of what gets cut, change as the boards go to different houses in the DIRTY ecosphere (re: i change qty or size etc..) or if i go to the new DIRTY site?  do different houses treat the #20 layer differently?

The board images on the old site (yeah yeah, i know they dont work right) show anything other than the first "board outline" shape as the outline, any other shapes that are not drill layer are black. im thinking  thats bad as drill holes show up as white - but then again im not sure what is really broken about the board images. i wouldnt have even given them another thought if i didnt already suspect i was doing something wrong. FWIW OSH park images show 100% success at what im trying to do, given how their images render - but their guidelines also do not(?)  say anything about smallest board outline winning.

on the flip  of all this side though....
Ive seen some posts on here about panelizing and using the #20 layer to create the inner routing and drills for mousebites, and that seemed to go fine. but im not panelizing, just trying to cut a funky hole, or square, in the middle of a PCB.

if this is a redundant post im sorry - but I did not find a 100% definitive answer in priors, and really just wanted to try to aggregate all the thinking on making holes in your PCB in one place.
 
 ref: viewtopic.php?f=70&t=8277&p=64667&hilit=outline#p64667
 ref: viewtopic.php?f=70&t=8300&p=64703&hilit=outline#p64703

thanks!

-Joshua

Re: Making Holes in a Board... Confusion

Reply #1 –
[quote author="drlight"]Hello Forum -
Ive seen some posts on here about panelizing and using the #20 layer to create the inner routing and drills for mousebites, and that seemed to go fine. but im not panelizing, just trying to cut a funky hole, or square, in the middle of a PCB.
-Joshua[/quote]

That's my thinking - panelizing uses routed holes, and you want a routed hole, so I'd guess they're one and the same way. Never tried it though.

Re: Making Holes in a Board... Confusion

Reply #2 –
I normally create large-ish holes etc. on the the board outline (GML) layer. I've not had any problems so far with DPCB doing this
Tony

Re: Making Holes in a Board... Confusion

Reply #3 –
There's some confusion in the FAQ:

Quote
    TXT            Routing and Drill (the holes and slots)

This is an excellon file, and it contains information about drills (circular!) only. In eagle, you have two layers with drill information:
Code: [Select]
44 Drills ... plated drills
45 Holes ... non-plated drills

The outlines of the board and all routed slots should be drawn in the Dimension layer (#20) with zero line width. If you have some non-plated holes, Eagle will draw an outline of the holes in layer #20. I guess this isn't necessary, but it doesn't hurt.

For Dirty PCBs, both layers (44 and 45) should be included in the TXT file. If you use the CAM file from dirtypcbs.com/about.php, everything should be fine. Just make sure that you draw the outline of routed slots on Layer #20.