Fabricators
Explanation of Quilter’s fabricator profiles, including stack-ups, fabrication rules, compile targets, filtering options, and pre-supported manufacturers.
Quilter gives you the ability to generate layouts that utilize stack-ups and fabrication rules sourced directly from fabricators, as well as a beta feature for reading them from your input files.
Fabricator profiles
A fabricator profile contains information about the stack-ups and fabrication rules that a PCB manufacturer supports and that Quilter will use when exploring layouts intended for that fabricator.
Fabricator profiles consist of:
Stack-ups, which define the physical parameters of your board, such as layer count, copper weight, and key material properties impacting physics calculations.
Fabrication rules, which determine the geometric limitations of the particular fabrication service that the fabricator will use to manufacture your layout. Examples include minimum copper trace width and clearances.
Each candidate that Quilter explores references a stack-up and fabrication rule set supported by the fabricator, as defined by the fabrication profile. We refer to this intersection of stack-up and fabrication rulesets as a "compile target."
Custom fabricator profiles
Quilter offers fabrication profile customization and implementation as a service to all paid customers. Customers can work with Quilter to define one or more custom fabrication profiles that utilize the stack-ups and fabrication rules that match the capabilities of their typical fabrication partners.
[BETA] Detected fabricator profile from user input files
ECAD tools generally save a stack-up and fabrication rules (DRC rules, in many cases) to your files. If you have intentionally configured them and not left the settings on defaults, you may want to try this beta feature.
There are two main caveats for this beta:
If you only select your detected stack-up and none of our other fabricators then Quilter will only try that single target, and it may not successfully route it. You can imagine setting a 2-layer with 10 mil traces for a dense board- it's just not possible. We highly encourage you to choose additional fabrication targets.
Quilter is not yet creating impedance profiles from the calculated from the board materials, so impedance controls on differential pairs and single-ended impedance comprehensions will not be accurate.
Pre-supported fabricators
For convenience, Quilter has pre-defined fabrication profiles for each of the following fabricators:
MacroFab
North American contract manufacturer offering prototyping to production.
Houston, TX, USA
CircuitHub
Turnkey PCB assembly service integrated with online BOM sourcing.
Massachusetts, USA
American Standard Circuits
Full-service PCB manufacturer specializing in advanced and RF designs.
West Chicago, IL, USA
Example: OSH Park
Here's an example "Fabrication Profile" for OSH Park, one of our Pre-supported fabricators, that specifies 12 unique Oshpark compile targets that align against OSH Park's fabrication service capabilities and can be explored in parallel each time Quilter generates layout candidates.
Common_10_mil
• 10 mil trace/space • 12 mil drill
✅
✅
✅
Common_8_mil
• 8 mil trace/space • 12 mil drill
✅
✅
✅
Oshpark_2_Layer
• 6 mil trace/space • 10 mil drill
✅
✅
✅
Oshpark_4_Layer
• 5 mil trace/space • 10 mil drill
🔴 Not supported by fabricator
✅
✅
Oshpark_6_Layer
• 5 mil trace/space • 8 mil drill
🔴 Not supported by fabricator
🔴 Not supported by fabricator
✅
How to specify
You can easily select the target fabricator that Quilter uses to generate candidates . On the design parameters page, select the fabricators and parameters you wish to see at the candidate review, and Quilter will attempt to place and route using those requirements.
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