Standardizing on drill sizes

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:12:04 GMT, fake-email@szivuejdl.com (Robert

Scott) wrote:

When you add parts from many different libraries, you can get many

drill sizes that are quite close together.  If there are too many

drill sizes, the board house may actually charge more to drill the

board.  Usually there is some adjustability in these drill sizes, and

some nearby drill sizes could be combined to reduce the overall number

of drill sizes.  Do any of you make an effort to minimize the number

of drill sizes?  And if so, how do you do it?  The only way I can see

is going back into the libraries and editing the packages, then

updating the layout to use the edited library parts.

I just discovered another possible solution to my question:  The drill

tolerance parameter in the CAM processor.  Apparently it lets you

specify a list of drill sizes and a tolerance so that one of the

listed sizes will be used if it is within the specified tolerance of

the exact size.

Robert Scott

Real-Time Specialties

Ypsilanti, Michigan

fake-email wrote on Mon, 16 March 2009 10:12

When you add parts from many different libraries, you can get many

drill sizes that are quite close together.  If there are too many

drill sizes, the board house may actually charge more to drill the

board.  Usually there is some adjustability in these drill sizes, and

some nearby drill sizes could be combined to reduce the overall number

of drill sizes.  Do any of you make an effort to minimize the number

of drill sizes?  And if so, how do you do it?  The only way I can see

is going back into the libraries and editing the packages, then

updating the layout to use the edited library parts.

Hello Robert,

The only way to update the drills of components is to update the library.

That said, Sunstone Circuits is just releasing a EAGLE tool (that I

created for them) that will automatically adjust drills for their prototype

process.  The drill mapping is pretty flexible and you might be able to

make to work for you.

If you sign up to labs.sunstone.com you can download the beta version.

What this tool does is essentially create a local cache of all library

files and then updates the holes/drills in the footprints as per the drill

mapping specified.

NOTE:  To use this it can only work when the board file is open and the

schematic is NOT.  So copy the PCB design into a blank directory and let

the tool go on that one copy.

Cheers,

James.

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