Contour Routing

Contour routing of a PCB is a process to cut out the final PCB from the surrounding material. This is done by milling along the outline of the PCB, taking into account the width of the milling tool. To avoid uncontrolled movements of the PCB, some small breakout tabs should remain, so that the final PCB could later be broken out from the remaining material by hand. The Contour Routing dialogue has various ways to control the number, size and location of these breakout tabs. The result of the Contour Routing is tool paths for the selected milling tool. As an additional functionality the Contour Routing dialogue can also be used for milling of cutouts in a PCB.

The Contour Routing dialogue is started from the Tool path -> Contour Routing menu. It operates on the currently active layout, typically the main layout.