Drill Checks

The Drill Checks action is a read-only action intended to find potential manufacturability defects in drill layers (thru, buried and blind via layers) and generate statistics on drill layers. The action is intended to operate only on drill layers. It uses the drill layer, the top and bottom layers of its drilled stack and any P&G layers in the stack. Categories, reports and attributes are generated.

Tests

The following tests can be applied to drill layers, as listed in the Action Screen above and immediately below:

1.      Hole Size - provides a list of all PTHs, NPTHs, and vias, as well as NPTHs that need pilot drills.

2.      Hole Separation - reports duplicate holes, touching holes and close holes.

3.      Missing Holes - reports missing drills for non-SMD pads.

4.      Extra Holes - reports redundant drills that do not belong to any pad.

5.      Power/Ground Shorts - reports drills touching large copper nets of more than one P&G layer.

6.      NPTH to Rout - reports drills that have the .tooling_hole , .mount_hole attributes and NPTHs that are close to the rout path.

Attributes

A summary of Feature attributes used during the Drill Checks is shown below.

Feature Attributes

Attribute Name

Description

.drill

The feature attribute .drill is attached to all drill holes on the drill layers. It defines the type of drill and is used extensively in fabrication.

.tooling_hole

This feature attribute is attached to drill features to indicate that they are tooling holes.

.mount_hole

This feature attribute is attached to drill features to indicate that they are mounting holes.

.smd

This feature attribute should be attached to outer layer pads which are lands for SMD components. It is set by the Set SMD Attribute Cleanup Action.

.pad_usage

The .pad_usage attribute can be attached to a feature and can be one of five values:

*    toeprint

*    via

*    g_fiducial

*    l_fiducial

*    tooling_hole

 

Unless otherwise indicated, measurements are from edge to edge of pads/holes.

Result Attributes

 

Attribute

Description

...num_pth

PTHs found by the action

...num_npth

NPTHs found by the action

...num_via

Vias found by the action

...num_2drill

NPTHs in need of a pilot drill

...num_duph

Duplicate holes found by the action

...num_touchh

Touching holes found by the action

...num_closeh

Close holes found by the action

...num_missh

Missing holes found by the action

...num_extrah

Extra holes found by the action

...num_pgshort

Total of all kinds of P&G shorts found by the action. Summary of the number of measurements in the PGSHORT_3 - PGSHORT_10_UP and all the PGSHORT_<layer name 1>_<layer name 2> categories