Phase: By 'Second Generation Development'
Artefacts impacted: ECAD for UKMARSBot and possibly Sensor ECAD.
Issue: There is not sufficient 'mechanical dimension' information published to 'DIY' sensor boards for UKMARSBot. Publishing that information would enable anyone to make their own sensor boards and use the UKMARSBot PCB as a robot platform.
Comment
Enabling robot builders to make sensor boards might encourage wider adoption of UKMARSBot as a robot platform. It may encourage school-children and 'makers' to develop sensor boards. IMHO that would make the robot even more interesting to the target users.
I would like to make sensor boards to attach to UKMARSBot. I can imagine others would too.
Folks might be able to use an ECAD package to extract the necessary dimensions. However, that is an extra hurdle. Also it is not necessarily possible to get those dimensions during development (for example right now). (I respect the developers desire to make progress without publishing ECAD.)
A 'mechanical drawing' with dimensions of the attachment area and clearance to the sensor header pins should be sufficient.
It may help to publish a 'dimensions' drawing separately so that the PCB renderings are uncluttered by it, and the dimension diagram may be simplified too.
Also publishing the dimensions as a separate document also would make it easy for 'consumers' of the documents to recognise that a new version of the dimensions has been published, independent of the ECAD. I appreciate this is an extra 'derived' document to keep synchronised. There may be a way to semi-automate this with a script. However, I wouldn't expect the critcal dimensions to change often as the sensor boards are reliant on the same information.
I think Eagle ECADs 'dimension' functionality might be sufficient. Failing that, the dimensions might drawn by hand on a 'documentation' layer.
It may be possible in the future to export that data as a DXF file, which should provide robust transfer to mechanical CAD and some ECAD.
A future, even more ideal, approach might be to have a 'library part'.
It'd be used by UKMARSBot to define the connection area dimensions. Outlines would not be on the 'Dimension' layer of the library part. That's because it's intended purpose is for sensor boards to ensure they mate with UKMARSBot correctly, and not actually cut an edge. AFAIK, several other ECAD packages can import Eagle CAD library parts, so its use might be wider than Eagle CAD.
Phase: By 'Second Generation Development' Artefacts impacted: ECAD for UKMARSBot and possibly Sensor ECAD.
Issue: There is not sufficient 'mechanical dimension' information published to 'DIY' sensor boards for UKMARSBot. Publishing that information would enable anyone to make their own sensor boards and use the UKMARSBot PCB as a robot platform.
Comment Enabling robot builders to make sensor boards might encourage wider adoption of UKMARSBot as a robot platform. It may encourage school-children and 'makers' to develop sensor boards. IMHO that would make the robot even more interesting to the target users.
I would like to make sensor boards to attach to UKMARSBot. I can imagine others would too.
Folks might be able to use an ECAD package to extract the necessary dimensions. However, that is an extra hurdle. Also it is not necessarily possible to get those dimensions during development (for example right now). (I respect the developers desire to make progress without publishing ECAD.)
A 'mechanical drawing' with dimensions of the attachment area and clearance to the sensor header pins should be sufficient.
It may help to publish a 'dimensions' drawing separately so that the PCB renderings are uncluttered by it, and the dimension diagram may be simplified too.
Also publishing the dimensions as a separate document also would make it easy for 'consumers' of the documents to recognise that a new version of the dimensions has been published, independent of the ECAD. I appreciate this is an extra 'derived' document to keep synchronised. There may be a way to semi-automate this with a script. However, I wouldn't expect the critcal dimensions to change often as the sensor boards are reliant on the same information.
I think Eagle ECADs 'dimension' functionality might be sufficient. Failing that, the dimensions might drawn by hand on a 'documentation' layer.
It may be possible in the future to export that data as a DXF file, which should provide robust transfer to mechanical CAD and some ECAD.
A future, even more ideal, approach might be to have a 'library part'.
It'd be used by UKMARSBot to define the connection area dimensions. Outlines would not be on the 'Dimension' layer of the library part. That's because it's intended purpose is for sensor boards to ensure they mate with UKMARSBot correctly, and not actually cut an edge. AFAIK, several other ECAD packages can import Eagle CAD library parts, so its use might be wider than Eagle CAD.