Fabrication/Drill Drawings

[randychase]

So how do you make them? Do you do them in AutoCad?

Do you use the supplied drill charts? Or manually draw your own charts?

Do you dimension in PowerPCB? Add the notes too on the drill drawing layer?

[ltrakal]

well i'm pretty new in pads, acutally i just installed it LOL, but in the other progframs i used to worked i just used the suplied drill charts...
is there anyother way to document the drill charts?

Laszlo

[randychase]

There are a few schools of thought and some blends. There is no one way.

The way a lot of people use, and I am sure what was envisioned by the programmers at PADS is this. The designer does all his documentation inside PADS. You use the supplied (although a bit crude) drawing and dimensioning tools to make your fab drawing on layer 24 (drill drawing layer).

Then you print out, plot, or send a gerber/PDF of the fab drawing from PAD's CAM output. And there ya go. Easy.

The downside of this is there are some holes in the concept. The drill chart is recreated by CAM from the database. It's not an editable entity. You can't change the order as it comes out. You can't change much in it. You can't add tolerances.

Also, drafting in PADS is not the easiest when you are used to powerful drafting programs like AutoCad. Plus in AutoCad, one can use their standard formats, logos, etc. Some of my customers insist that the documentation be done in AutoCad.

But if you want to go the AutoCad route, how do you? The drill chart and symbols are generated in CAM. A DXF output from PADS misses that and gives you a lot of stuff you probably don't want.

So most people use a workaround if they want to use the drawing in AutoCad. They use a converter and convert from Gerber or HPGL to DXF. The downside there is that the text is not text anymore, but arcs and line segments. Still not perfect.

P.S. The drill chart position in PADS is part of the CAM options, you need to move it from the 0,0 probably.

[ltrakal]

well i will see as i'm starting to work with the program if there is any better way to do it..
as far as atuocad, i have some experience in that program, i work with it since version 9...i use to work with mecahnical drawings too and is a really nice 2d software package, but for pcb design you are right is not the tool...i'm just amazed how good is this program (PADS), so i will need some time to set it up and keep going with the designs here.

[ltrakal]

hmmmm, there should be a way, as i know that you can make your own commands in pads (kind of what i used to do when i used the dos versions of autocad a long time ago), maybe there is a way to create a txt file form the cam file with the drill drawing and attach that with the dxf file.

Laszlo

[ratkiller]

Originally posted by randychase
So how do you make them? Do you do them in AutoCad?

Do you use the supplied drill charts? Or manually draw your own charts?

Do you dimension in PowerPCB? Add the notes too on the drill drawing layer?

I use the method you talk about. Moving the drill drawing in my cam setup. Why did the programers of pads design it such that the user can't change the drill chart? I always put my drill chart on layer drill drawing. Why would pads want it on layer 24. A number like 10000 -3000 is common for my drill chart location. It depends on the size of the board in question.


If you drew your own drill char how would you suppress the one made by cam?
I add my fab notes to the drill drawing layer.

wayne