Contour GCD

Contour GCDs appear under Holes in the Geometric Cost Drivers pane. Each Contour GCD represents a slot in the board used, for example, to align electrical components of the printed circuit board assembly. Properties include:

• Tool Diameter: indicates the tool diameter of the required to create the contour by drilling a series of holes.

• Tool Path Length: indicates the length of the tool path used to create a contour by drilling a series of holes. Used to determine the number of holes required—see Drill Circuit Holes Formulas.

• Perimeter: distance along the perimeter of the contour, used by the Router process to determine routing time.

• Is Plated: indicates whether the contour is to be plated. Users can edit this property in the Geometric Cost Drivers pane.

• Is Drilled: indicates whether the contour is to be created by drilling a series of overlapping holes. See Drill Circuit Holes Formulas.

• Is Outside Perimeter: if true, this flags a problem with the extraction process or with the information in the Gerber files. The extracted information indicates the presence of a contour outside the board’s outline.

In addition, each Contour GCD bears the Lies On relation to each Layer GCD that it starts or ends on.