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Sequential drill output for multi-layer boards?

cheriton

Hi,

 

I have designed a 6-layer board with blind vias and have sent the resulting gerber and ncdrill data to the manufacturer.

 

They have sent it back requesting that the drill files be sequential instead of the default, which seems to be the only way of outputting drill information.

 

They say;

 

HDI is  L1-2,L1-3,L1-4,L1-5, L2-6, L3-6,L5-6, this is not a correct design.

 

1.  We advise customer to change to L1-2,L2-3,L3-4,L4-5,L5-6 sequential drills

 

Is this possible in Circuit Studio?

 

If so, how?

 

Thanks

 

John

  • 0

    Is it possible the via drills you are requesting are not valid for the manufacturer's process? I notice they list L1-2, L2-3 etc and you have L1-2, L1-3 so could it be they cannot produce some of the desired hole depths. An interesting article on Eurocircuits covers some of the limitations that can occur depending on manufacturing technology.

    https://www.eurocircuits.com/blog/blind-and-buried-vias/

  • 0 in reply to e14softwareuk

    Thanks for the reply but you may have missed the point. I know they can't (or won't) process the drills as they are so I will have to change them. The issue is that I need to know if this is possible in Circuit Studio and, if so, how.

  • 0 in reply to cheriton

    I must admit I am not one hundred percent certain what the manufacturer is asking for - if it is ordering of the drill file output or they are saying exactly which layer pairs can be drilled. In CircuitStudio you control the pairs that are available from the Layer Stack Manager using the Drill Pairs button.

  • 0 in reply to e14softwareuk

    They're requesting that via drills are output as layer pairs rather than from top-to-bottom so they want a via that runs from layer 1 to layer 4 to be included in 2 different (or probably 3 different) drill files, each on covering a drill pair - layer 1 to 2, layer 2 to 3, layer 3 to 4 rather than just one drill specified from layer 1 to layer 4.

    I have tried including drill pairs in the PCB however I still get the same output - through-layer vias are shown only once. This is not helped by my being unable to delete the Top-Bottom drill pair. CS will simply not allow it, which seems a bit odd if the other drill pairs include both the Top and Bottom layers.

     

    The only option I can see at the moment is to remove all the multi-layer vias and replace them with discrete vias for each layer pair, overlaid on the same hole. This will be for some 300 vias and is not something I really want to be trying to do.

     

    Anyone got any other ideas to make this work?

  • 0 in reply to cheriton

    I don't think there is any way to give them what they are after if it really is a matter of generating the drills as pairs overlaid at the same position. This does seem a non-standard requirement by the board manufacturer (although it has been a few years since I was actively having boards made). Is it possible to look at other board manufacturers?

  • 0 in reply to e14softwareuk

    Hi Peter,

    I'd love to but the manufacturer is specified by my client rather than by me. I did check with the manufacturer we use for in-house builds before starting this project (like a sensible person) and they did not specify drill formats so I simply assumed that that would be the case for other manufacturers. Silly me.

  • 0 in reply to cheriton

    Random idea. From memory each layer pair is output as a separate file (e.g. L1-L3). If I am understanding correctly this would be L1-L2 and L2-L3 for the manufacturer. Could you use a text editor to build up the outputs required, for example anything you generate from L1 (e.g. L1-L2, L1-L3, L1-L4 etc) would need to be in manufacturer's L1-L2 and so on. Might work if the tool numbers are consistent.

  • 0 in reply to e14softwareuk

    Good random idea too image

    I have no doubt it can be done but I'm a bit nervous of sending an expensive prototype board for build with a manually edited hole list. Actually I would have thought that the manufacturer would have software to convert the NCDrill files where necessary. I shall have to look to see if such a thing exists.

  • 0

    It's been a while and still no real solution to this problem.

     

    Does anyone know how to persuade CS to output NCDrill files on a layer-by-layer basis? I believe OrCAD will do this if you select the "By Layer" radio button in the NCDrill output dialog so why is it not possible in CS?

     

    Is it even possible in Designer?

     

    Thanks

  • 0 in reply to cheriton

    Ok, so it seems that the only way of outputting sequential layer drills in CS is to make every hole a stack of vias in the PCB. This can be a bit tedious, especially with a board with a lot of vias, but it does work.

    I am told that the new version of Altium Designer (V19 I believe) comes with a much improved Layer Stack Manager that shows how the board will be physically drilled, thereby highlighting problems with manufacture.

    Hopefully Altium will update CS to include this rather useful feature.