Numerical Innovations - Help Center

Venting adds copper which isn't connected to any nets on the board and does not affect the functionality.  The are various purposes for Venting (i.e Thieving) such as improving etching throughout the entire panel, to improve manufacturing efficiency, and more.  Typically small copper circles, squares or even a solid copper plane will be added to larger blank spaces to even out the copper distribution across a copper layer. 

• Pattern/ Description :  After selecting a Pattern, a default description will be automatically created to assist with configuring the pattern description.  Each pattern has different requirements.  Typically only Dot and Hatch make use the Pattern descriptions, and must be comma separated.
  • Rail   Uniform metal places around the perimeter of the panel.
    • [width] Overall width of rail (around all 4 sides)
  • VRail Add Vertical Rails only.
    • [width]  Width of vertical rail (runs along left and right panel sides) 
  • HRail  Add Horizontal Rails only.
    • [width]  Width of horizontal rail (runs along top and bottom panel sides) 
  • Solid  Add solid copper to available areas/layers.
    • No value.
  • Dot  Add dot patterns to available copper areas/layers.
    • [ patternX,patternY,dy,shape1,width1,x1,dx1,shape2,width2,x2,dx2 ]
  • Hatch  Add hatched patterns to available copper areas/layers.
    • [  patternX,patternY,width1,offset1,angle1,width2,offset2,angle2,width3,offset3,angle3 ]
• Panel Clearance:  Clearance from Panel extents.
• Job Clearance:   Clearance from inserted jobs in the panel.
• Symbol Clearance:  Clearance from external resources like coupons.

Note:  FAB 3000 includes several sample Panel Setup files (*.pan) which make use of various venting patterns.  We recommend trying those samples and evaluating the venting pattern results.