Profile Cutout and other issues

[Steve Lilley]

Hello Marius,

I have the latest build from 3 days ago.

1. I was trying to cut out my PCB Profile (see attached) - With Source Object, Kind: Single and Type: Gerber, the Geometry is generated as a Rectangle. But with Kind: Panel and Type: Gerber it will then follow the contour. “This is a single board”.
2. With Gaps, Type: Bridge it will generate the contour geometry, but with Type: Thin, the Thin gaps are generated and the 6 holes in the panel are generated with the Type Thin geometry. It does the same with the Mouse Bytes.
3. I really don’t need the Gaps at all sense the entire board is taped to the table. So I tried to use the Milling Plugin to cut the profile. But in the Milling Plugin, Offset Type: Out, does not offset. It would be nice in the Cutout Plugin to have the option of Gaps Type: None, to have no Bridge at all.
4. Other Issues - In the Project menu, the file names do not highlight. You can’t tell if the Plot is Enabled or Disabled.
5. Suggestion - I always thought it would be nice on the Project Menu to have an icon, like an eyeball to the left of every file name. on click to enable and disable the plot like in Fusion 360.
6. I was also having issues of crashing when disabling some of the plots. I will wait until the menu issues are fixed to see if it still an issue.

I included the profile.gbr for testing. I had it rotated and Move to Origin.

Thanks, Steve

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[Marius Stanciu]

Hi Steve!

Regarding your issues I will try to shed some light.

I was trying to cut out my PCB Profile (see attached) - With Source Object, Kind: Single and Type: Gerber, the Geometry is generated as a Rectangle. But with Kind: Panel and Type: Gerber it will then follow the contour. “This is a single board”.

The Cutout process is the process to separate the PCB board from the surrounding PCB material. It requires to have an outline Gerber file. An outline means a Gerber file that contains just a border-like trace surrounding the PCB.
Any other types of Gerber files are not really suitable. A profile is not suitable here too.
If you hover of different GUI elements sometimes you have extra information’s from tooltips.
Like this:

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It does not say that it does milling too. I know that it is a semantic issue since internal openings in a PCB are called ‘cutouts’ too. But milling inner openings is not what the Cutout plugin does.

But with Kind: Panel and Type: Gerber it will then follow the contour.

This is a misuse of the intended behavior. See the tooltip description.
Again, it talks clearly about PCB outlines not profiles.

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With Gaps, Type: Bridge it will generate the contour geometry, but with Type: Thin, the Thin gaps are generated and the 6 holes in the panel are generated with the Type Thin geometry. It does the same with the Mouse Bytes.

As said, you are misusing the plugin. The GIGO principle apply here too. If you are not familiar with this technical term you can read about here: https://www.techtarget.com/searchsoftwarequality/definition/garbage-in-garbage-out

It would be nice in the Cutout Plugin to have the option of Gaps Type: None, to have no Bridge at all.

It is already there.

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Other Issues - In the Project menu, the file names do not highlight. You can’t tell if the Plot is Enabled or Disabled.

Not true, the disabled objects are grayed out which makes the enabled objects stand out.

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If you want the difference to be more distinctive you can play with the colors of enabled and disabled states here:

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I always thought it would be nice on the Project Menu to have an icon, like an eyeball to the left of every file name. on click to enable and disable the plot like in Fusion 360.

I already looked on this some time ago and decided that this does not bring much more information than we already currently have (see above). This does not means that this might not be implemented in the future, just that right now there are other things with more priority.

I was also having issues of crashing when disabling some of the plots. I will wait until the menu issues are fixed to see if it still an issue.

That is a serious one and I will need more info on it.

Best regards,
Marius

[Marius Stanciu]

But in the Milling Plugin, Offset Type: Out, does not offset.

This, I missed.
I will look into it. Thanks for the report!

[Marius Stanciu]

But in the Milling Plugin, Offset Type: Out, does not offset.

I tested the offset and it does work, yet here is a more direct solution for your problem.
How you generate the right outline Geometry from a profile Gerber.
https://ibb.co/bzKyv8c

[Steve Lilley]

Marius,

After removing the holes from the Profile.gbr, both the Cutout plugin and the Offset in the Milling plugin work correctly. I thought it would just ignore the holes, but that does not seem to be the case.

I could not duplicate the crash… it may have been caused from a Geo that was generated from the Profile.gbe with the holes.

Thanks, Steve

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