track location in DXP

Hello All,

well i want to send the protel gerber data out for PCB manufacturing. but the manufacturer need the location for some of the tracks for testing the impedance. But what i can see in the protel file is the name and in the gerber file i can only see the location.

Can anyone suggest me how can i find the location for these tracks.

Also, what is the meaning od HAL gold plating.

Thanks in advance

I think what your fab wants is an IPC-D-356A testpoint file. They should be able to generate one themselves from the Gerber files, but you can also generate one. Go to File>Fabrication Outputs>Test Point Report and check the box for IPC-D-356A to generate the report.

It's also possible that they are asking you which tracks you have defined as controlled impedance. Usually, you would just tell them the width and layer of the controlled impedance tracks. You could also give them the x,y coordinates of a pad or via that terminates the track. They would use a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR), or Time Domain Analyzer (TDA), to measure the impedance of the track connected to that pad or via.

od - means outside diameter

HAL - means Hot Air Leveling - it's a coating for your copper made by using hot air to melt a thin layer of solder on all exposed copper on the surface of the PCB.

gold plating - means instead of other coatings for the exposed copper, they would plate a thin layer of gold. Usually, they plate a thin layer of nickel over the copper, then the gold goes over the nickel.