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Build house issues no KeepOut Layer or Board outline GKO

nihunter

Using PCB investigator I get the following.

importing the Gerber .zip only

 

opening the GKO file Inline image 2

 

Inline image 11

 

The Asian Build house keeps telling me

"We find that your gerber file lacks of the outline, pls check and revise. And we will send the working file to check before the real fabricating."

 

So I found this:

https://circuitmaker.com/forum/posts/216454/

 

"Tell them that the PCB outline is on the .Outline layer. Many PCB fabs (particularly in China) are in the habit of using the Keep-out Layer since almost every design done in Protel and Altium since day dot has duplicated the PCB outline on the Keep-out Layer to prevent polygons and routing from going to the edge of the PCB. "

 

They are using CAM350 what is going wrong here?

 

 

I am really not sure how to fix this. I am using PCB Investigator to check the CAM. Do you have any suggestions how we can fix this?

  • in reply to e14softwareteam

    As far as I can tell. In keepout layer at the bottom select the outline and under PCB inspector uncheck keepout to extend the perimeter to all layers. I have not confirmed this with the Build house yet but I have looked at the GKO file to maker sure there is vector coordinates included.

    https://www.element14.com/community/message/217302/l/re-circuit-studio-130-outputting-gerbers#217302

     

    image

  • in reply to nihunter

    Hi Nick,

     

    Element14 asked me to look at this.

     

    That thread you pointed to https://www.element14.com/community/message/217302/l/re-circuit-studio-130-outputting-gerbers#217302

    is actually what not to do, i.e. that Keepout checkbox shouldn't normally be checked.

     

    Have a look at this screen capture.

     

    image

     

    If the object is put onto the Keep-Out Layer then it will have the force field effect of stopping electrical objects with nets assigned to them from crossing the Keep-Out object. This will apply to all electrical layers like Top Layer, mid layers, plane layers, Bottom Layer.

     

    So if you click the tab at the bottom of the screen to select Keep-Out Layer, instead of pressing R to route, press L to route a line on that layer. (If you press R, the software will jump back to the Top Layer). That's all you need to do to create a Keep-Out.

     

    The use of the Keepout checkbox is for the occasion where you want to prevent electrical objects from going into an area of just one electrical layer. For example, a connector on the Top Layer has metal casing but you don't want a flood of GND under it. On this occasion you want to stop tracks and polygon pours from going under the connector. But you do want to be able to route under the connector on the other layers.

     

    So you place some tracks on the Top Layer where you want the Keep-Out, then enable the Keepout checkbox. Those tracks will NOT output to the Gerber file! They are layer specific keepouts. There will be a very thin pink outline around the edge of the layer specific keepout tracks.

     

    But returning to your original question...

    I can see from the black areas in your screenshot that your Board Shape is defined, plus you have some tracks on the Keep-Out Layer. This is often enough for the board house, but some of them want to you create another copy of these tracks to a Mechanical Layer, for example Mechanical 2.

     

    To do this, select the Keep-Out tracks, like in your own screenshot. Copy to clipboard, deliberately click on a corner, keeping a mental note of the XY location (shown on left of the Status Bar), to complete the Copy operation. Press F11 to view the PCB Inspector and it will show your 11 objects that you placed on the Keep-Out Layer. Now change the Layer in the inspector to Mechanical 2, to move your existing tracks to the layer required by the board fabricator.

     

    Now Paste from the clipboard and click in the same location you remembered. This paste operation will return your Keep-Out tracks, so you'll now have tracks on both layers.

     

    Alternatively (recommended), the Home > Board Shape > Create Primitives from Board Shape command will create tracks with the exact shape as the Board Shape, and it allows you to specify the layer that they will be created on. This is especially useful if your Keep-Out tracks were not intended to be used as the board shape by the board fabricator.

     

    Best regards,

     

    James Harriman

    Altium