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PCB design in Mils (Inch) or MM's?

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though I'm a chinese engineer, I use mils,

because I feel mil unit is simple and convenient.

best regards






Ash488 said:
For design ¨mm¨ & for manufacturing ¨mils¨.

Regards.
Click to expand...
 

I switched to mm a couple of years ago when over 50% of components on the board where Metric. On my newer boards 99% are metric so its a no brainer.
 

in details, we must use mils, for example for trace widths we can use 7 mils, its easy than call "0.1778 mm"

but in the component editing (decal editor) we can define the height and the width of the component by millimeters (ie. 3cm X 4 cm is easy than "1181 mils x 1574 mils)
 

For components I use whatever makes the most sense for the type of component I am working on. I use mils for everything else (Hard habit to break)
 

It's all down to gerber files, which are American.
PCB design is done in mils.
Min track 8 thou is easier to understand, than 0.something mm. It's also easier to layout on a 100 thou grid than it is on a 1mm grid.
Board dimensions in mm, design files in mils!
 

Decision to choose whether mils or mm is arbitrary; it's up to you. As for me, I use mils because most Ic's I use are specified in mils.
 

I use mil in all my designs, because Gerber and NC drill file are using the mil/inch.
 

It is always recommend to work on units as MILS in PCB board with 0 Decimals.

When to work in MM ?
if the Physical Symbol(Foot-Print) data sheet is give in mm only and dn’t exceed 2 decimals
 

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