Tooling Holes Checks

Introduction

Tooling Holes Checks analyzes sets of tooling holes to ensure that any set of tooling holes that belongs to a single panel step, or belongs to a repetitive group of steps on the panel, is not symmetric. The action also investigates whether there is any other combination of holes in the panel (whether tooling holes or not) that form the same pattern as the tooling set being checked, and could thus be confused with that tooling hole set.

If a tooling hole set is symmetric, there is increased risk of assembly errors due to incorrect placement (e.g. mirrored or rotated) of the material to be punched, or due to placing a punch tool in an incorrect (rotated) orientation.

The Tooling Holes Action reports where tooling holes are placed, so that the appropriate material or punch tool can be placed correctly on the panel. The Action ensures that the punch tool does not acknowledge other hole sets (whether tooling holes or not) that are not part of the tooling hole set being checked.

This action requires the special license option: flexhol .

Background

Tooling Holes set

A group of tooling holes used to position a specific tool on the panel. A set defines one specific placement of the tool on the panel, and could be repeated several times on the panel.

There are two ways to place a tooling holes set:

  1. A Set is defined in the PCB step, and S&R-ed in the Panel step to all the PCB step's features using the PCB S&R definition.
  2. A Set is defined in the Panel step, and copied to all PCB steps location using S&R information.

When the first method is used, each tooling hole in the set should be assigned the attribute .tooling_hole_set . This attribute identifies the holes and pads that should be used as tooling holes, and the value of this attribute represents a unique index for each set. All tooling holes that belong to the same tooling hole set should have the same index value.

When the second method is used, each tooling hole in the set should be assigned the attribute .tooling_holes_set . An identical index value should be assigned to all Pads that belong to the same tooling set. One of these tooling hole sets (usually considered as the original Set) should be assigned the attribute .orig_tooling_holes_set and assigned the same tooling index value.

  • When using the function Copy Feature with S&R , there is an option to automatically assign the attributes to the copied Pads. For more information, see the parameter Set Tooling Group in the S&R Selected Features Popup. Details are in Doc. 0601, The Graphic Editor,

Algorithm

For each processed layer, the action finds the corresponding drill layers and analyzes all drill holes in the drill layer that are assigned the .tooling_holes_set attribute, as well as other drills that are similar in size. For each set of tooling holes, the algorithm checks for two properties: