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Tip to Ensure Your Design is Ready for Manufacturing

Posted: 04 Mar 2015, 05:38
by BayAreaCircuits
If you're designing for manufacturing, many of you probably already use the Verification feature within Diptrace to check your design against the default Design Rules. As Diptrace is a manufacturer-agnostic tool, the default design rules will help ensure your design is ready for manufacturing for the majority of manufacturers. However, for those of you who use Bay Area Circuits for manufacturing your PCBs, we thought it would be helpful to offer an additional suggestion to ensure your design is manufactured and delivered to your specifications.

Once your design has been completed in Diptrace, before you place an order for manufacturing, we recommend you export your Gerber files and upload them to our online DFM (Design For Manufacturing) tool, InstantDFM; http://instantdfm.bayareacircuits.com/. InstantDFM is a fully-automated tool which will produce a complete DFM report in just 1-2 minutes.

Why bother with InstantDFM? There are several reasons:
1. This is the same step that we, the manufacturer, will do before your order is processed. If you, the designer, have already completed this step you can identify and resolve any design issues prior to placing an order which will prevent any holds or delays in processing your order.
2. All manufacturers have different capabilities. While the Diptrace DRCs will identify any glaring issues, they are not manufacturer-specific. InstantDFM will check your specific design against our specific capabilities.
3. It's completely free and takes just an extra couple of minutes to ensure your design is ready for manufacturing. Plus, you'll be able to save a PDF of the DFM report for your archives which can serve as a great reference when you need it.

One note about InstantDFM - there are some cases where a warning may be generated or a tolerance is highlighted in red. These are not necessarily "errors" and in most cases this does not mean that we are unable to manufacture your design. Most of the time these just serve as a "heads up" to us as the manufacturer, warning that an area may be approaching a limitation. If you have any questions about a DFM report - just drop us a note and reference the Job ID.

Also, for more general information on BAC's manufacturer-specific design rules, visit: http://bayareacircuits.com/design-rules/

Re: Tip to Ensure Your Design is Ready for Manufacturing

Posted: 07 Nov 2015, 02:11
by jay_rogers
BayAreaCircuits wrote:If you're designing for manufacturing, many of you probably already use the Verification feature within Diptrace to check your design against the default Design Rules. As Diptrace is a manufacturer-agnostic tool, the default design rules will help ensure your design is ready for manufacturing for the majority of manufacturers. However, for those of you who use Bay Area Circuits for manufacturing your PCBs, we thought it would be helpful to offer an additional suggestion to ensure your design is manufactured and delivered to your specifications.

Once your design has been completed in Diptrace, before you place an order for manufacturing, we recommend you export your Gerber files and upload them to our online DFM (Design For Manufacturing) tool, InstantDFM; http://instantdfm.bayareacircuits.com/. InstantDFM is a fully-automated tool which will produce a complete DFM report in just 1-2 minutes.

Why bother with InstantDFM? There are several reasons:
1. This is the same step that we, the manufacturer, will do before your order is processed. If you, the designer, have already completed this step you can identify and resolve any design issues prior to placing an order which will prevent any holds or delays in processing your order.
2. All manufacturers have different capabilities. While the Diptrace DRCs will identify any glaring issues, they are not manufacturer-specific. InstantDFM will check your specific design against our specific capabilities.
3. It's completely free and takes just an extra couple of minutes to ensure your design is ready for manufacturing. Plus, you'll be able to save a PDF of the DFM report for your archives which can serve as a great reference when you need it.

One note about InstantDFM - there are some cases where a warning may be generated or a tolerance is highlighted in red. These are not necessarily "errors" and in most cases this does not mean that we are unable to manufacture your design. Most of the time these just serve as a "heads up" to us as the manufacturer, warning that an area may be approaching a limitation. If you have any questions about a DFM report - just drop us a note and reference the Job ID.

Also, for more general information on BAC's manufacturer-specific design rules, visit: http://bayareacircuits.com/design-rules/

I had designed many PCBs, but this was not known by me. It will help me in future.

Re: Tip to Ensure Your Design is Ready for Manufacturing

Posted: 09 Nov 2015, 23:46
by Molly
Thanks for the tips. It really helpful for the beginner.