Improve your design

The PCB Configurator and most of its features can be used even before you have your PCB data ready. Doing so will get you the correct set of Design Rules Check (DRC) values to use in your CAD-system. At the same time you get a fair idea of what your project will be costing. This pre-design work can be done in a matter of minutes and can be saved in the your account basket where it stays valid for one month.

Stencils

In PCB Configurator one can select a stencil. Stencils can come in handy when your board has Surface Mount Technology (SMT) parts on it. It is a tool to easily apply solder paste at the right spots and in the right amounts for soldering SMT components. If your board only has through-hole parts or easy-to-solder SMT parts, you don’t need a stencil.
 

If you do need a stencil, you must check top and/or bottom stencils to receive it together with your boards. When selecting a stencil you will notice that the checkbox ‘eC-registration compatible PCB’ in the top section turns orange. Also a message is displayed under the price grid. Only check this box if you own (or plan to order) Eurocircuit’s eC-stencil-mate or eC-stencil-fix (see video) to make sure that your board and stencil will be compatible with these tools. 

Material

The Material sections lets you specify details about the board’s material and thickness and how much copper you want on the external layers. Clicking the Buildup wizard button opens a window that groups these parameters together with parameters that are found in other sections. Here you can see how and where certain options apply in the board’s layer stack. Note how a little pile of coins shown next to an option indicates that it increases the board’s price.

Technology

The Technology section contains the boards DRC values usually only really understood by professional PCB designers. Luckily you can click on each option’s text to get into the help system. Doing so you will quickly discover that there is much more to making a PCB than just drawing traces in a CAD program. What you must know here is that the default class (the board’s ‘resolution’ so to speak) is 6C and that choosing a lower class does not make the board cheaper. A higher class allows finer detail and smaller holes, but at a higher cost. Open the Classification wizard to change the board’s class without understanding or knowing the details of the other options.

Tick the ‘Holes <= may be reduced’ option if you allow Eurocircuits to decrease your vias to improve the board’s manufacturability by solving annular rings issues. Be sure to set the diameter to your via diameter to avoid accidentally reducing component pin holes.