Introduction for Drill / Route File

Introduction for Drill / Route File

Drill Files define the size and coordinates of any holes to be drilled in a PCB design. These files can be used to control a drilling machine, which creates holes for Vertical Interconnect Access (VIA), mounting, and THT component placement.On a standard 2-sided PCB, drill files are needed for the CNC machine to make accurate through-vias. For more complex multi-layer boards, many of the holes will be micro-vias, which pass through only a few layers rather than the entire board. These types of holes are also known as blind and buried vias. We will need a separate drill file, with a distinct name, for each layer pair that will be included in your design.

For Example: Let us assume that you have a 4-layer board with most vias extending all the way from top to bottom, and some buried vias extending from layer 1 to layer 2. In this case, you should have two drill files, with one of them named “Drill_1-4” and another named “Drill_1-2”.

Route Files are a type of file that define the electrically-conductive copper traces, known colloquially as “routing”, on a PCB design. These files are used to control a fabrication machine in order to lay copper traces on a PCB board.

Regarding the submission of drill and route files to hopetimepcb: if you use the ODB++ format, drill files and route files will both be included in the .TGZ compression file. If you choose to use the Gerber RS-274X format,then separate drill files and route files will need to be provided in RS-274X format.

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