So far I’ve been sending a single board file to the manufacturer accompanied with a novel of array specification. Lately it’s been causing some confusion, so to avoid it I would rather send them a whole array file. What is the best way to specify routing or v-scoring in PcbNew? Should I just put it to the User Drawing layer? I see also a potential problem of those lines becoming overlapped when I array the design. I wonder if it would affect the Gerber files? There needs to be a script for doing this, when you just specify number of tabs per side, perforation and tab and route thickness and it plots the lines for you.
In accord with my experience, the v-scoring depends on the manufacturer. The best thing is to put in a gerber file (User Drawings as you suggest) and name it “v-scoring”. Mind that when you v-scoring a board, you must draw a line that crosses all the board. You cannot have a v-scoring line that stop in the middle of the board. It is OK however that the lines cross one to each others in perpendicular.
Afaik all that is usually handled in a special gerber tool, not in a pcb layout tool.
Care to share? Which tool? I don’t really care much where it is done, as long as I don’t have to switch back and forth between different packages. I personally would rather see it in Pcb layout, because you ARE laying out a PCB. You might need to add some global feducials to your array, may be some text, additional NPTH holes for perforation which all jibes well with a pcb layout tool functionality
One I know of is CAM350… not that I could afford it though, way out of my league and area of expertise
There is a paneling tool by a group called ‘this is not rocket science’ that works from gerbers and makes milling panelizations which might be usable once they finish it/make it available… dunno.
Might not work for V-grooving though.
Have a look here:
http://blog.thisisnotrocketscience.nl/panel-merging-tool-progress/
Well since we are dreaming here I would rather go and buy Altium and be done with that. Now back to the real life, back to the question of the thread.
The one time I did a V-grooved pcb I just sent them the eagle files for a single pcb and told them how many I needed and they did the rest, but that was years ago… pcb-pool was the fab-house.
Sorry that I can’t be of more help.
Thanks. This is the scenario I’ve done before with the pcb manufacturer I use. I’m trying to change to doing it myself otherwise I don’t have a full control of the final result.
For rectangular boards, there is ‘gerbmerge’. The last time I used it it could do v-cut, but not routing.
Quite some time ago, I had this thing made. The mouse-bites were part of the individual board, the routing paths were drawn by hand. Quite tedious. This is especially painful if the board needs to be changed.
Don’t even try doing this in classical mode, you’ll go insane.