Hello

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the need for a panel 
drawing.

It depends...

I have worked for companies that bought their bare boards from outside 
fab shops and did the PCB assembly in house.
We always did a panel drawing as we knew exactly what our tooling, 
equipment, and design needs were.

I have worked on designs where the PCBA was an assembled panel that did 
not get broken up until final assembly in the end product. That required 
a panel drawing.

Other times the company worked with a specific fab house and a separate 
specific assembly house. We did not supply a panel drawing but asked the 
fab shop to supply a Gerber or pdf of their proposed panel for our 
approval and, more importantly, the assembly shops approval. This 
allowed both shops to negotiate the design that best met their capabilities.

I have also worked on designs where I would not even know what continent 
the fab and assembly shops were located in. The contracted manufacturers 
had locations world wide and would use the appropriate facilities that 
had time available to meet the order. This means the panel size could be 
different for every order placed as the location could change. That 
means the panel could, for instance, be prototyped in a shop using inch 
dimensions, and mass produced in a shop using metric dimensions. A panel 
drawing would then tie the shops to a possibly wasteful or inefficient 
design.

However, if there are specific design needs that require that break-away 
tabs or scoring areas not be located in certain places, then this needs 
to be on the fab drawing. You just don't need a panel drawing to do this.

Greg Smith



On 2/12/2013 1:21 PM, Pete wrote:
> If you don't wish to make panelization drawings as a time savings, you'll spend more time fixing issues.  Always make a panel drawing, the fab house doesn't know the board assembly, the CM doesn't know the end product.  You know what you need, put it on a drawing so there's no doubt.
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