JPS631577B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to artwork in printed board manufacturing, and particularly to an improvement in a method for automatically drawing pattern check drawings in manual design of printed board patterns.

To design a printed board pattern manually, first create a pattern original by hand, then read the pattern on this handwritten pattern original to convert the pattern coordinates into digital data, and then automatically create an artwork film based on this reading data. A method of creating one is adopted. In this case, before creating the artwork film, it is necessary to check whether the pattern has been read correctly, that is, whether the read data is accurate.

For this reason, conventionally, based on the read data,
- A method is adopted in which a pattern check drawing is automatically drawn using an automatic drawing device such as a Y plotter, and this drawing is visually inspected to check whether the read data is correct. In the pattern check drawing,
The through-holes, front pattern, and back pattern of the printed board pattern are drawn together on one side of the drawing paper, and usually three colors of ink are used to distinguish them by color. However, in a printed board, generally, thin patterns such as signal lines and thick patterns such as power supply/ground lines coexist on the same surface (front or back surface). However, because the types of ink that can be set in existing automatic drawing devices are limited, it is not possible to color-code these thin patterns and thick patterns. Therefore, in the past, thin patterns and thick patterns were drawn with the same color and the same line width, making it impossible to distinguish them from each other, making it difficult to visually check them.

As a countermeasure to this problem, a method has been considered in which, for thick patterns, the width of the pattern is also read when reading the pattern, and the width of the pattern is drawn as a wide band when drawing. However, this method has the disadvantage that the steps of pattern reading, data processing, and plotting are more complex than the conventional method of reading and plotting the pattern as a simple line with virtually no width. Not suitable for

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to be able to clearly express the distinction between thin patterns and thick patterns in the above-mentioned pattern check drawings, and to greatly simplify each process of pattern reading of handwritten pattern originals, data processing, and drawing. The purpose is to realize a simple automatic drawing method for checking drawings.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail based on embodiments and with reference to the accompanying drawings.

The present invention, in the manual design of a printed board with a mixture of thin and thick patterns as described above, reads the pattern coordinates from the original handwritten pattern and uses an automatic drawing device such as an XY plotter based on this read data. When automatically drawing a pattern check drawing, first draw the entire pattern once, then draw only the thick pattern twice on the same drawing with the drawing origin shifted, to distinguish between the thin pattern and the thick pattern. It allows for expression.

1 and 2 schematically show an example of a printed board pattern check drawing drawn by the drawing method of the present invention. In these figures, the part indicated by numeral 1 corresponds to a through hole, the part indicated by numerals 2a and 2b corresponds to a thin pattern and a thick pattern, respectively, of the surface pattern of the printed board, and furthermore, the part indicated by numeral 3a and 3b
The portions indicated by 2 correspond to the thin and thick patterns on the back of the printed board, respectively.
Although it cannot be clearly shown in the drawings, the through hole 1, the front patterns 2a and 2b, and the back patterns 3a and 3b are drawn using three colors of ink, color-coded.

According to the method of the present invention, first, as shown in FIG. 1, the entire pattern is drawn once with lines of the same thickness. The pattern spacing d (FIG. 1) is typically about 2.5 or 2.54 mm. The drawing state in Figure 1 is the same as the conventional drawing state, and the thin pattern 2 of the front pattern
Since the pattern a and the thick pattern 2b are the same color and the same thickness, they cannot be distinguished, and the thin pattern 3a and the thick pattern 3b of the back pattern are also the same color and the same thickness, so they cannot be distinguished.

Next, as shown in FIG. 2, only the thick patterns 2b and 3b of the front and back patterns are drawn twice with the drawing origin shifted from the first drawing (FIG. 1). As a result, the distinction between the thin patterns 2a and 3a is expressed by one line and two lines as shown in the figure. Note that the appropriate amount of shift of the drawing origin is 0.5 to 1.0 mm.

Methods for shifting the drawing origin include the base register method, which changes the base data by adding or subtracting data corresponding to the amount of deviation to the base data, and the method of mechanically adjusting the mounting position of the pen head of an automatic drawing device such as an I can think of a way to shift it by just that.

In addition, in order to selectively write only the thick patterns 2b and 3d out of all the patterns twice, there is a method of attaching an index to the pattern coordinate read data to identify the thick patterns, or a method of attaching an index to the pattern coordinate read data, or a method of writing the thick patterns 2b and 3d twice. This is possible by creating a separate file for the thick pattern data.

The method of shifting the drawing origin and the method of identifying thick pattern data are conventionally known and very simple methods. Furthermore, in the method of the present invention, the base data obtained by reading the handwritten pattern manuscript in the same manner as in the conventional method can be used almost as is without modification, and data processing is very simple.

As described above, the method of the present invention can express the distinction between thin patterns and thick patterns, and each step of reading the original handwritten pattern, data processing, and drawing is very simple, and is highly practical. It's a method.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

The figure is a diagram schematically showing an example of a printed board pattern check drawing drawn by the drawing method of the present invention. It is a figure which shows the state where only a pattern was written twice. 1...Through hole, 2a...Thin front pattern, 2b...Thick front pattern, 3a...Thin back pattern, 3b...
...Thick pattern on the back.

Claims (1)

[Claims] In the manual design of printed board patterns that include a mixture of thin and thick patterns, the pattern coordinates are read from the original handwritten pattern,
When automatically drawing a pattern check drawing using an automatic drawing device based on this read data, first draw the entire pattern once, and then draw only the thick pattern twice on the same drawing with the drawing origin shifted. An automatic drawing method for drawings for checking printed board patterns.