Altium DXP

[Blue News]

Hi,

Wonder if some one could help me on this; I have a small PCB designed on the
above CAD, the PCB size is about 1"x1" and what I like to do is to be able
to print as many as it is possible side by side on an A4 sheet (art work) so
that I can do one UV exposure to make as many PCB as possible (on a A4). I
am not sure how this is possible on DXP. I have tried to create another Room
to try to copy the first PCB design's component to the new room but moving
the new room just moves the original first design.... Any ideas?

Thanks
Sean

 

[Leon Heller]

Hi,

Wonder if some one could help me on this; I have a small PCB designed on the
above CAD, the PCB size is about 1"x1" and what I like to do is to be able
to print as many as it is possible side by side on an A4 sheet (art work) so
that I can do one UV exposure to make as many PCB as possible (on a A4). I
am not sure how this is possible on DXP. I have tried to create another Room
to try to copy the first PCB design's component to the new room but moving
the new room just moves the original first design.... Any ideas?

I can do this easily in Pulsonix with the 'step and repeat' CAM/Plot
function. What you might be able to do is import the Gerber and drill files
into GC-Prevue and then panellise the PCB. I think GC-P will output to a
printer.

Leon
Leon

 

[Lord Labakudas]

I am not sure what you mean by new room. Just make the board
dimensions equal to the size of an A4 sheet, draw the design near one
of the corners of the board, select the entire (1" x 1") design and
then press Ctrl-C (to copy). After you copy, the cursor changes to
cross-hair to allow you to select a reference point for your copy. In
your case you can select the reference point to be one of the corners
of your design. Clicking on one of the corners will complete the copy
process.

After you have complete the copy process, whenever you click paste(or
Ctrl-V), you can select any of the other corners of the design (other
than the one that you used to copy the design) to paste is
side-by-side to the original design. Repeating the process, you can
create the matrix of designs that you wanted.

Hope this helps,
-Vijay.

 

[Blue News]

Hi Vijay,

I have tried your way which would normally work, however my board is a part
of RF board with Polygon plane on both sides connected to the GND. when I do
the copy&paste of course it looses all the nets and just copies tracks and
the Polygon, but the polygon plane not being related to the GND is then
modified and dose not connect to the GND leaving a lot of tracks and pins
floating. of course after the copy&paste there are no nets just tracks.
hope I have explained it properly, any ideas on that?

thanks
Sean

 

[Brad Velander]

Sean,
The problem with lost net connectivity relates to using just
the regular Copy command. I do not use DXP but in all earlier
versions of Protel you must use the "Paste Special" command and
select the checkbox to maintain the net connectivity in your
copy. There is also a checkbox allowing for repeated reference
designators which would also change during a regular copy.
(Usually the regular copy results in component R1 changing to
R1_1.)

 

[Lord Labakudas]

Oops ! I understand the problem now. Most of my recent work with
Protel were on array antennas which had no netlists and schematics and
hence they worked without any trouble. But with netlists, I guess the
only way would be to export the gerber files and then load them into
CAM editors that can import Gerber files (such as Circuit CAM, which
works for me), and then do the cut-paste operation (and finally export
the result back to Gerber).

I am not sure myself about how this can be accomplished directly in
Protel without repeating the entire schematic all over again.

-Vijay.

 

[Blue News]

Thank you Brad. I tried and tried with the paste and paste special yesterday
till i got it right in the end. it is exactly as you say. All sorted, thanks
to every one for your help.

regards
Sean

 

[Blue News]

thanks again for trying Vijay, but i found it is only possible with Paste
Special (with ticked options) as Brad described above.

regards
Sean