I fairly new to KiCad, I’ve made a few simple boards but now moving to something a bit more complicated, specifically with ICs on both sides that will go to contract manufacturing.
Anecdotally (not related to KiCad) I have heard there can be problems with the pick and place file used for automatic component placement, notably to do with wrong orientation of parts on the back of the board.
I’ve searched the forum and found references that you have to talk to the individual manufacturer about things like orientation - which is fine, but makes me wonder that depending on what the manufacturer says, is there a global setting or do you have to edit component footprints individually.
So a couple of questions:
Has anyone had direct experience of generating double sided boards (orientation specific components on both sides) for automatic pick and place and were there any particular problems with back of board?
Is there a global setting within PCBnew for setting up the manufacturer’s requirements?
Thanks very much for this.
Reading other posts it seems like rotation (origin and angle) can be ambiguous. I guess origin comes from the individual footprint but does this ever give issues? particularly on the back of the board or does -ve X cover this?
It is a minefield, normally managed by the assembly house. Orientation of parts in the tape is all over the place, apart from there being no standardisation of where pin 1 is on a SOT-23 package
This is why ODB++ and IPC-2581 is so important.
Between the pos file and the genCAD there are a number of combinations of settings which may aid or hinder assembly
these two formats remove almost all ambiguity from the generation side of things leaving the tape orientation. This significantly cuts down on setup time and errors.
