component locations as "fiducials"?

[Dave McGuire]

Hi folks. I was just blindsided by my PCB vendor; they sent me an
entire order of PCBs that were not panelized as I had requested. It's a
fairly large order, and I need to start building them, so I don't have
time to just wait for them to replace it.

The PCBs have mounting holes, so I can manage them in my stencil
printer. But what I'm worried about is fiducials. There are no
fiducials on the boards themselves; my fiducials for this design are on
the rails...which are not present due to no panelization.

Can I tell OpenPnP to use 0603 pads, or perhaps vias, as fiducials
temporarily? What would be the best way to do that?

Of course the correct solution is to have the PCB vendor fix the
order, which they will surely do in some way, but the timing on this is
pretty tight and I have to start building boards for my downstream customer.

Thanks,
-Dave

--
Dave McGuire
McGuire Scientific Services, LLC
New Kensington, PA

[Zdenko Stanec]

Hi Dave,

You can use the option "Set board location and rotation using multiple placements" and follow the process.

Br,

Zdenko

[tonyl...@gmail.com]

Zdenko is correct but you would manually need to perform that on each board.  I've never actually tried this, but if you have a lot of boards, and you want to automate it, and you know the CAD coordinates of some pads or vias, you should be able to use them as fiducials - they may not work quite as well as true fiducials (since they won't have the solder mask cleared around them) but will probably be good enough.  You would need to create a new package (on the Packages tab) and a new part (on the Parts tab) for these "pseudo-fiducials" plus setup a pipeline on the Fiducial Vision Settings tab to detect the pad or via.  Then you just need to add them as placements to the board, give them some id like PseudoFidn, assign them the new part you just created, set their X and Y locations (from your CAD data), and set their Type to Fiducial.

Tony

[Dave McGuire]

I have been working on this approach and I think I'm on the right
track; it looks like I will be able to get this going. Thank you both
for your advice, I appreciate it very much.

Thanks,
-Dave

On 11/7/22 16:44, tonyl...@gmail.com wrote:
> Zdenko is correct but you would manually need to perform that on each
> board.  I've never actually tried this, but if you have a lot of boards,
> and you want to automate it, and you know the CAD coordinates of some
> pads or vias, you should be able to use them as fiducials - they may not
> work quite as well as true fiducials (since they won't have the solder
> mask cleared around them) but will probably be good enough.  You would
> need to create a new package (on the Packages tab) and a new part (on
> the Parts tab) for these "pseudo-fiducials" plus setup a pipeline on the
> Fiducial Vision Settings tab to detect the pad or via.  Then you just
> need to add them as placements to the board, give them some id like
> PseudoFidn, assign them the new part you just created, set their X and Y
> locations (from your CAD data), and set their Type to Fiducial.
>
> Tony
> On Monday, November 7, 2022 at 1:27:32 PM UTC-6 zdenko...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Hi Dave,
>

> You can use the option *"Set board location and rotation using
> multiple placements"* and follow the process.
>
> Br,
>
> Zdenko
>

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