Making the Most of Draftsman (and Blueprint)

If you have ever had to create documentation for PCB fabrication and assembly, you know there is information that needs to be conveyed but not captured in the drawings or the formatted files such as Gerber, ODB++, or IPC-2581.

We depend on mechanical layers, e-mails, Mircosoft Office (Word and Excel), and phone conversations to capture this information. This is manually intensive, tedious, and done under project deadline pressures. Inevitably, something is forgotten or ill-defined, and it's another day of delay with an urgent flurry of phone calls and e-mails.

Draftsman was added to Altium Designer to reduce this effort and allow the 'templatizing' of this activity, providing consistent data.

We will show you how to use this tool and provide insights into the best features for your documentation.

These tool features work best when one understands the different types of documentation. We encourage you to look at our webinar on the topic "They want WHAT document?"

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Fabrication & Assembly Documentation in Minutes

Does your EDA tool dictate your entire PCB design process?

EDA companies do not play well with each other. We all know this and have accepted this reality. But what if the old saying about "having your cake and eating, too," applied to EDA? Now, it is! Blueprint-PCB by Downstream Technologies was specifically developed to take the manufacturing and assembly data from your EDA tools to generate a common documentation package for your fabricators and assemblers.

What does this mean to you?

Use the EDA tool you want! No more tool-specific mandates that reduce productivity during EDA transitions and ramp-up times.

No more laborious documentation efforts. With your ability to create robust templates, documentation is simply a matter of feeding your Gerbers, ODB++, or IPC-2581 data into Blueprint-PCB and generating a documentation package that is uniform and complete in minutes!

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PCB Documentation in Minutes

Here is another Nine Dot Connects Video Learning Series on Blueprint-PCB.

If there was ever a silver lining when obtaining a technical degree, it was simply that most courses did not require term papers! So then, why do our employers expect us to be novelists regarding documentation? It has been the bane of our careers, a necessary evil of sorts... until now.

Blueprint-PCB by Downstream Technologies was specifically designed to take the hassles out of the fabrication and assembly documentation efforts. By taking advantage of the common elements of Gerbers, ODB++ or IPC-2581, Blueprint-PCB not only makes an effort quick and easy, but it can also be templatized to make your documentation uniform across all projects!

If you dreading another day of hassling with documentation, look no further! Watch this video.

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Beyond the Design and Layout of Your PCB

For many of us in the design and layout of a PCB, our design's manufacturing and assembly are outsourced. We provide documentation to our contract manufacturer and expect them to work their magic.

Documentation that was successfully submitted to a prototyping manufacturer may be unacceptable to a high-volume manufacturing facility. Libraries may have to be modified to handle pick and place machines. Components are moved to accommodate fabrication equipment tolerances. In some cases, the routing may have to be heavily reworked. Without a proper understanding of the design through the manufacturing flow, more time and money are spent correcting something that could have been done right the first time.

Knowledge of what is required after the Gerbers or ODB++ files are generated is essential. At this webinar:

Paul Taubman Nine Dot Connects
Paul will discuss Gerber files, ODB++, and IPC-2581 and their history, construction, and effective use

Ray Fugitt DownStream Technologies
Ray will discuss DFMstream to allow you to capture manufacturing issues before release to manufacturing.

David Hoover TTM Technologies
David will discuss issues that are commonly detected in the manufacturing process.

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Outjob in Altium Designer

How important is creating correct and consistent documents for your PCB designs? Do you have a process and tools to perform the task of correct, consistent PCB documentation creation in an efficient and automated way?

Completing a board layout is simply a milestone; it does not mark the end of a project but rather the beginning of an effort to get everything documented. Documentation provides the information necessary to communicate the designer's intent to those who will fabricate, assemble, test, and in some cases, manufacture in high volume. It is also necessary to allow you and your colleagues to revisit, revise, and improve existing designs.

Altium Designer provides a batching capability called the Outjob file. This file allows a team or designer to set up their documentation configuration to generate all the PCB documentation precisely and consistently for each project. Bill of Material, Gerbers, ODB++, Pick and Place files, Drill files, 3D drawings, PCB layout drawings, and schematics can all be set up with the Outjob files to ensure consistent and professional documentation.

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They want WHAT document?

Despite modern design tools' ability to quickly generate documentation for assembly and fabrication, in many cases, the mentality of document delivery is to still 'throw it over the wall.' Sometimes, we give far more information than needed. Other times, the fabricator or assembler comes to us asking for some odd document we may have never heard of, let alone created.

This webinar will discuss what documents are needed for fabrication, assembly, and testing, where they need to be generated within the PCB process, and what aspects of the schematics, libraries, and PCB layout lend themselves to their creation.

If you are doing any of this documentation by hand, please join us to see what you can do to make the quick generation of accurate documentation much more straightforward.

This presentation is a small slice of the PCB Fundamentals training class that we have developed to assist designers in understanding all aspects of PCBs for successful manufacturing.

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Nine Dot Connects Project Template Set

Designs are one thing, but Templates are another.

Have you ever tried to pull together a schematic template in Altium Designer? How about an entire project template set? Designing a PCB and designing a template are two different creatures. When it comes to templates, it must encompass the company's flow of designs. Like your first PCB, you may feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and scattered at such an endeavor. The time it will take to develop your template may be days or weeks. You may be asking questions like:

• Where should one start?
  

• Where should the parameters be located?
  

• How should parameters be named?
  

• Should the schematic template overlay be used?
  

• What should be in the title block?
  

• What schematic symbols and/or footprints should be made available?
  

• What schematic sheet(s) need to be present upon the start of a new project?
  

• What mechanical layers should be employed for the footprint library and layout?
  

• How should the Outojb files be configured?
  

The list goes on.

Using both our Altium Designer design and support knowledge, we at Nine Dot Connects pulled together a template that encompasses the entire project, from the project parameters to Outjobs, and everything in between.

If you like what you see, click the button below to access the free template set download.

Why free? Because the template set is one of the many examples to convey our Altium Designer knowledge. You know who to contact when you need help with design, layout, training, or libraries!

Download Template Set

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