ABACOM - ELECTRONIC SOFTWARE

Hello,

I have read the PDF manual 5 times and tried many ways, but I simply cannot figure out how to create a large rectangular cutout hole in the center of my board. Lets say My board is 100mm x 100mm and I want a 25mm x 25mm hole to be routed out in the center of the board. Maybe because the board needs to wrap around a large chassis part for example, like a camera lens. How on earth do I do that? I drew a rectangle and I checked the "cutout-area" checkbox, but it doesn't stay checked, and there is no visual indication that there is a hole (similar to a round pad hole with the big "X).

How do I route out a large rectangular hole inside of the board outer profile?

Thanks
Rick

You can use the Outline layer "O" to draw cutouts within your PCB.
See attached file.

Thank you,

I see how it works now. So just the mere presence of two nested polygons on layer "O" means that the inner polygon will be routed out, correct? This is was not apparent to me in the user interface, I guess I was expecting to see a big green "cross" filling the routed out area, similar to the cross we see when a pad is used as a hole. Also I learned that the "cutout-area" checkbox refers to the copper not the actual routing of the glass board.

Rick

Yes, the white lines will be milled by your manufacturer. So, a polygon within your PCB means a cutout.

Hi,
just be careful to really close polygons and not have unconnected line segments. That will cause trouble. And on inner corners of cutouts (for example a square), remember to make rounded corners, as sharp inner corners aren't possible because the milling bit is round. Check what the smallest milling bit of your pcb manufacturer is (mostly 1mm, sometimes 2mm) and draw all inner corners as circle segments.

And remember: The line thickness in SprintLayout doesn't matter; the milling bit will cut until it reaches the center of your line. On inner cutouts, it will cut away half of the inside of your line, on the outline of the pcb, it will cut away the outer half width of your line.

Thank you,

I'll remember to fillet my corners for an inside cut.

Rick

Also, I set the track width to 0.00 when drawing cutouts as the PCB house has come back to me in the past and had to ask if the cut was the inside or the outside of the track used. (Does that make sense?)

Rob.

No that doesn't make sense. If the line width is set to zero, inside and outside are the same.