Here's an interesting one. I've recently discovered that board cutouts, despite by definition removing material, actually count toward the board dimensions for pricing purposes for some PCB manufacturers.
For example, take this oddball PCB shape I threw together- I'm using this example because It's trivial to make something complex like this using board cutouts (takes just a few minutes), but would be brutal to create by manually editing the points for the board outline.
The DipTrace 3D preview shows the board as expected:
However, throw it into one of the websites for ordering, and we find that costs are computed based on the bounding box enclosing all of the operations. In this case, despite the fact that it would be manufactured fine, it more than doubled the cost of the board.
Does anyone have a solution to this? Is there an option in DipTrace to "clip" the PCB subtraction operations to the board outline?
Board Cutouts Increase PCB Dimensions?
Re: Board Cutouts Increase PCB Dimensions?
Not that I am aware of. The only thing that comes to mind would be to export the Board Outline layer as a DXF file (pay attention to the Units setting), import the new DXF file into a competent 2D CAD program, use the trim tool to cut off the excess, export the results as a DXF file and import the modified DXF file back into the Board Outline layer.
Tom