Method of work for generating rigid-flex design

[CktMaker]

@davidsrsb

It’s been a long time since I have seen one of these. We used to use them with components on the rigid part only, presumably mounting smd on a flexible was frowned upon at the time

Yes, smd components on flex is not common in a google search but it is done. (Think flexible LED strips, although these are typically flex only during install vs active flex) In fact I did this in a similar project. In my application, the amount of flex when is use was very minimal, and its geometry is such that the flexing happens where there are no components.

Even if I only had smd parts on the top of rigid pcb, it would still seem a challenge to implement this using Kicad. Thanks!

@PCB_Wiz

Another possible pathway is to fork the design and manage flex as a 2L design, and FR4 as a separate Top-only design, probably with a connector-row used as vias, (or special via-parts) to manage the boundary, that is carefully fixed in both designs. A script could check they still align after changes.More of a pain, but you do get more routing room.

This was my initial thought and probably leaning towards. Here’s a very informative thread on mezzanine (daughter board) implementation that has some useful ideas but still would not work 100% for a rigid flex.

Questions about a Mezzanine Implementation in KiCAD

I’m in the process of doing a layout which will have a stacked mezzanine daughter board on top of the main board I’m laying out. It will use standard 0.1" vertical unshrouded headers. So alignment of all the connector through holes is nessesary. This is a multi page schematic with extensive use of hierarchical sheets and global labels to partition the design within the same project. I have two separate schematic symbols with corresponding related footprints created for Main board and Daughterbo…