ABACOM - ELECTRONIC SOFTWARE

I have a suggestion for the next release...

My board fabricator does not like it when the copper goes all the way out to the edge of the board outer profile. They ask that you make the copper stop short of the edge by at least .15 mm. Currently I have to manually cut out .25 mm of copper all around the edge of every board I make to create this "outer copper margin".

It would be very handy if in the "board properties" panel you added a new property called "outer copper margin" it would display a drop down list of .15, .25., .5, .75, .1 mm increments and a checkbox. When checked, it will automatically create a margin all around the board outer profile of that width by removing the copper that currently goes all the way out to the edge. It should perform this task on all 4 copper layers.

Right now it takes me 10 minutes to draw a margin around the outer profile of all 4 layers manually, and if I change the board size I have to do the margin all over again. With this new "outer copper margin" board property I can do it with one click.

Thanks
Rick

Great idea! would be nice if the "auto ground plane" function would also respect the margin and wouldn't flood over the board outline.

I would also like to see this feature added for future updates - it would save me much time too... and it seems to me to be a simple thing to implement.