Multiple board on a common page

Manufacturing
1

Hi, I seem to have to make panels for my PCB supplier when I have a small PCB. Currently mine is 20 x 21mm and I want to put 24 on a single A4 page. The snag is that they have to be 2.4mm apart for the routering. The sheet is then supplied as a breakout board which is easy to handle and build.

The only way I have found to do this is to draw lines on the Dwgs.user layer then copy and align them by eye and grid. The problem is getting zoomed in enough to be sure of alignment then zooming out to see the correct place. It needs two hands and a very stable mouse!

Is there anyway to copy and move exactly in a block function? There is mention in the manual of this being possible in GAL mode under ARRAY TOOL 14.3.1 Advanced Editing, but I cannot find any reference to that mode. What is it please?

The Library wizard got me again with a new install of 4.0.2 stable on win XP. I wanted to try to use the newer version of KiCad so that I could use the move exactly funtion not available with the older version.

Several fp-lib-tables were in the templates folder so I deleted the “pretty” table and added KIGITHUB https://github.com/KiCad to the environment set up under Configure paths. I also added a /pretty folder to the modules folder and dumped the downloads from Github in there. So far it seems to have worked.

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Once you selected what you want to copy you don’t move the mouse and hit [SPACE]. There is a relative coordinate readout at the bottom right of the screen that then let’s you move with the arrow keys to where you want it.
And yes, set the grid to a reasonable size, so you get the resolution needed for moving.
A 1mm grid won’t work for 2.4mm copy distances :wink:

Another hint - select from the right bottom to top left, that way everything is being selected, even centers of arcs that would otherwise not be within the boundary of your selection rectangle.

As for the array function - it’s right here:

574Ă—720 70.1 KB

PS: don’t forget mousebites to be able to easily break your sub-boards apart after they’ve been done.

1 Like
3

Thanks for that.

With a fairly coarse grid it does work better, obviously with an appropriate size selected.

I was hoping that the array function might achieve it but it seems not.
What is the GAL mode as mentioned in Advanced Editing section 14.3.1 in the manual:
“The array tool acts on the component under the cursor, or, in GAL mode, on a selection.”
dangerous.

4

GAL means OpenGL I think. The other one worth mentioning is Legacy.