Many PCB services now are able to produce custom shaped PCBs: for example Seeedstudio’s FusionPCB service (I’ve already blogged about it) in the past published photos of round PCBs… and even doll-shaped ones:
In this tutorial I’m going to show how to draw custom shaped PCB using Inkscape and Eagle.
Workflow
Eagle’s PCB editor doesn’t offer advanced drawing tools (Bezier curves…); that’s the reason why I’ll to draw the PCB shape in Inkscape, save my drawing in DXF format and, using an ULP script, import it in Eagle:
Inkscape
After having traced the PCB shape in Inkscape, select all the drawing (CTRL-ALT-A) and convert objects and strokes to path:
Choose now the node editor tool (F2) and select again all the nodes (CTRL-A). The ULP plugin imports segments, therefore you need to add to the drawing a number of nodes enough to have well-defined curves (for example a circle with only 4 nodes would be imported as a diamond!)
Run the extension Modify Path – Add Nodes and type a value between 5 and 10px (depending on the size of the drawing and its complexity) as the maximum segment length:
Then save the drawing in DXF format and make sure the use LWPOLYLINE option is checked:
Eagle
Download the import-dxf script from Github and save it in the ulp subfolder within the folder where Eagle was installed.
From the Eagle’s PCB editor, click on File – Open ULP and choose the script you’ve just downloaded:
Load the DXF file and choose 20 – Dimension ad the layer where the drawing will be imported to:
The final result: