How-To-Document

How-To Document
Procedure Description
How to Manually Assign All Pens Tools

Requirements
BoardMaster software

Problem / Procedure Solution

Unassigned tools usually result from a tool mismatch in CircuitCAM, whereas
BoardMaster has no correlating tool to assign to a layer/phase Pen holder. To assign
all tools, go to the ‘Edit/Tool Assignment’ menu selection.

In this dialog box, you will find a couple of sections/windows. They are utilized as
follows:
3

1
4 – These are
either D(drill) or
M(mill), and are
displayed in a
2 metric format.

1) Project\Path – click on each project you have in your Job. Each project has its
own set of tools to assign.

2) Click on each Layer of a project, to assign all tools for each phase in
turn.These are CircuitCAM layers

3) Each CircuitCAM layer gets assigned to a BoardMaster Phase. More than one
layer may be assigned to the same phase at a time.

4) Each BoardMaster Phase, has a set of ‘virtual tool holders’, or, ‘Pens’, which
must have a tool assigned for each pen.

5) Each Pen is assigned the appropriate Tool. The Pen has a size assigned to
it, and the tool must match up with the size and type, whether ‘Mill’ or ‘Drill’.

1
 How-To-Document
To sum up the process, the following applies:

1) Go to the Edit/Tool Assignment menu.

2) Click on the first LMD file you have in your Project listing.

3) Click on each layer in the Phase File/Layer dialog box in turn.

a. Check that the Layer is assigned to the correct Phase.
b. Check that every Pen used for that phase, has the correct Tool
assigned to the Pen. Note that each Phase may have more than one
Pen used for it.

4) Click on the next Phase File/Layer, and repeat step 3) for each succeeding
Phase File/Layer.

**Please note that if you have made sure all Pens are assigned with the Tools,
sometimes, you may still receive an error message stating that ‘All Pens are
not assigned’. If this occurs, you must follow the above steps and actually re-
select each tool with the drop down menu, until the offending Tool has been
reselected. **

References
BoardMaster Manual
LPKF Technical support

Author
Jeff Bengtson