| ID: | 4747 |
| From: | Bob Paddock <gr...@gmail.com> |
| Date: | Fri, 5 Feb 2021 08:28:25 -0500 |
| Subject: | Re: [pcb-rnd] new: major cleanup & upgrade of the vendordrill plugin |
| in-reply-to: | 4744 from rn...@igor2.repo.hu |
| replies: | 4748 from rn...@igor2.repo.hu |
> I know the vendordrill plugin is not much used anymore, > I think the motivation was that one of the possible use cases is to > specify a fab's drc settings and drill map in one place. I can shed a bit of historical light here. >But the whole > idea is broken and limited: it doesn't specify the layer stackup, export > details (cam jobs now), etc. It was a different era ~20+ years ago when this was done to solve a specific problem of the day. I was the one that came up with the vendor mapping concept and Dan implemented. I think I was the one that added the RegEx code to solve a multiple vendor problem. At that time, ~20 years ago, APCircits was the primary provider of low cost boards. To use the service they had a very small drill rack that could be used and a small set of allowable clearances. Also the libraries of the day had nothing in common as far as drill/whole sizes. It was, and as JohnG says still is, a PITA to have to completely redo a layout for small tweaks like drill whole sizes and clearances simply to send the board to a different vendor. If a CAM job can support multiple vendors or is easy to tweek multiple CAMs for different vendors, really anything that doesn't require touching the layout, could supplant the vendor file concept.
Reply subtree:
4747 Re: [pcb-rnd] new: major cleanup & upgrade of the vendordrill plugin from Bob Paddock <gr...@gmail.com>
4748 Re: [pcb-rnd] new: major cleanup & upgrade of the vendordrill from rn...@igor2.repo.hu