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Discussions FAB 3000 - Gerber/CAM Software FAB 3000 - Gerber/CAM Software

Copper Pour/Balance

It all worked. Thank you very much for all the support.
I have two questions.
I've started creating PCB border Gerber files when I generate the overall project files. Can I use that border file somehow to automatically define the copper balance area without specifically selecting each border vertex around the border until the area is closed in?
Some of my boards I added copper balancing to took a while to process. It appeared that boards with more plane increased the time dramatically but I'm not sure that was the cause. Is this to be expected or do I have other issues. The boards were no bigger than the board you worked with.
4 CommentsSorted by Oldest First
Those are some great questions.

1.  On Monday January 10th, we are going to be releasing a public update for FAB 3000 and that update will have the option which allows you to select the border first, then run copper balancing (and it will use your selected border as the outline).


2. FAB 3000 uses a boolean engine to calculate the placement of the copper balancing boundaries, so it can be pretty memory intensive.  To speed up the process of "Copper Balancing" we can decrease the number of unnecessary points used in boolean calculations by increasing the value of the Preference option called "Arc Deviation (mil)".  Please perform the following:
A. Start FAB 3000
B. Go to menu:  Setup | Preferences...
C. Click the tab "Rendering", and increase the value of "Arc Deviation (mil)" to 0.5 or higher (instead of 0.3 which is the default).

You will then need to load the re-load gerbers (as you cannot use an existing Workspace because those additional points are already there), and run Copper Balancing.  You should see a performance increase.


Note:  If you choose the Copper Balancing option "Composite (Fast)" it will create the patterns 100 times faster however it will not remove partial patterns.
I would like to use this feature but cannot get it to work.  Is it available in version 5.10.2?
When you say it doesn't work, can you be more specific?  If possible please fill out a support ticket, include a specific description of the problem; and if possible provide any sample files.   Here's the link to fill out a support ticket:
http://www.numericalinnovations.com/support.html



Thanks for the feedback but since this was posted 11 days ago I have forgotten the details.  I withdraw my post.  I seem to remember wanting to increase the length of some component pads and was hoping that I could create a new ground by using the pour feature but could not get it to work. I solved this another way and will post support tickets in the future.

Thanks
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