Building components in FAB 3000 that are not a derivative of 90 degrees.

Building components in FAB 3000 that are not a derivative of 90 degrees.

It is very common that a PCB design is sent out for manufacturing and assembly without any X,Y Centroid data for the components. Sometimes these designs come from a 3rd party, and there is no way to ask or retrieve the centroid data from the original designer.  In these situations, a Part Centroid file must be extracted from the Gerber files. 

Here's a recent situation that occurred for a customer, and how FAB 3000 resolved the issue:

"I am having an issue when building components in FAB3000 that have angles. When selecting a component at an angle that is not a derivative of 90 degrees, FAB3000 creates an issue where it skews the angle. I have attached a screenshot of the issue. FAB3000 attempts to offset the pads. This is a simple capacitor, but the software has created some sort of "S" shaped pattern around the component. This skews our angles when exporting the centroid data. Is there something we have done to cause this?"

FAB 3000 can typically automatically guess the orientation when working with angles that are a derivative of 90 degrees.  When using other angles, you may need to adjust the value in "Verify Rotation" until the component is properly oriented (at 0 degrees) in the Footprint Preview window.

Here's a tutorial showing me assign 5 degrees to "Verify Rotation" to help orient that part to 0 (in the Footprint Preview.  Afterwards you will get good results for the components on your PCB.

https://numericalsoftware-update.s3.amazonaws.com/tutorials/2018-07-11_12-37-24_rotate_part.mp4

 

Here's another related topic which also may be helpful, https://numericalinnovations.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/14000003289

 

FAB 3000 (CAM Software)

FAB 3000 is a professional CAM software package targeted for anyone who would like to have "high-end" CAM software to run advanced DRC/DFM verification, generate component centroids, create SMT Stencil pads, Panelize PCBs, and perform many other useful features. Download Now

 

Get Numerical Cloud for only $75/month.  Includes FAB 3000 (CAM Software), ACE 3000, and EasyGerb. Runs on up to 3 computers. Easily perform all Design Integrity Checks on your Gerber and ODB++ files. No contracts and cancel anytime.