I'm pretty sure the answer to this is 'no' but here goes...
I have a PCB design with a micro and want to panelize it 8x to the panel. But then I want to route 6 traces from each PCB to a snap-off rail that includes an edge connector. This will allow me to plug the entire panel into a programmer and program all 8 PCBs at the same time.
Question is, does Easy-PC allow for additional routing at the panel level?
Or is there another way to do this? For example, what if the snap-off rail with the edge connector is itself another PCB design that I incorporate into the panel? And then is there a way to ensure the traces exiting the 8 PCBs connect to the traces on the snap-off rail?
I don't believe you would be able to do that using the panel tool in Easy-pc but I'm not that familiar with it. I have had strange panels in the past and what I've done is just created the panel as one PCB design and put lines where I would like the V-scoring (and noted that so the PCB vendor will be aware).
Maybe you could do some version of this but don't route/V-score where the traces connect the 8 PCB's. Then you will have to manually separate the boards in those locations which should be small.
I thought I would update this for anyone interested...
Yes, I successfully did what I wanted to do. I designed custom rail PCBs in addition to the main PCB which is panelized 8x. to connect traces from the 8 PCBs to the rails I simply routed the lines slightly past the edges of the PCBs, same thing for the matching rail traces. That produces errors at DRC but ignored them.
Then when I created the panel the traces all lined up and the overlaps ensured they connected. I had the panel fabbed and it all worked perfectly.
Custom panel design
Posted - 28 Oct 2020 : 05:41:37
