Printing multiple boards on the same A4

[akis]

Hello, I have designed a board which is 110x58 mm, and I thought it would be better to squeeze 4 of those onto the same A4 transparency so then I can develop 4 at the same time (UV exposure, development, etching etc).

The way I did it was to copy and paste the whole PCB 4 times into DIPTrace PCB editor, placing all 4 close together, but this forces DIPTrace to copy all the components giving them new IDs etc. Ideally the "print multiple" should be a function of the printing process, not the design process.

Does anyone know how to do this?

[alanb]

In  Diptrace  PCB layout take the Edit->panelising option and specify how many columns and rows you require. You can specify the panel spacing etc if required.

[akis]

Oh yes, it works perfectly, many thanks!

[Falcon69]

It would be nice if there was a check box in Diptrace's Copy Matrix that you can check/uncheck if you want the component ID's to reference to new numbers or not. Panelizing is nice, but sometimes you want multiple designed boards on one printed circuit board, with tabs or v-cut, etc.  Can't really do that with panelizing.