Deliverables

A deliverable is an artifact a process hands to a shop. Each process publishes a list of them, and the export dialog writes the ones you tick for the stack you are exporting. See Fab processes window for where a process’s published list is set.

Which one you want follows from how the layer is made, not from what it looks like. The same drawing exports as a mask set for a layer patterned by exposure, and as cut contours for one built by stacking cut film.

Mask set

A mask set is one file per distinct depth in the layer. Each file holds the union of every feature at least that deep, so the masks nest: a 100 µm chamber appears in the 50 µm file and again in the 100 µm one.

That nesting is what a bottom-up master needs — coat to the next depth, expose, coat again, expose again, develop once at the end. A ridge 100 µm tall has to stand in every exposure up to its height, so a file holding only the features exactly 50 µm deep would be meaningless.

A file is named for the depth it exposes: chip-Chip-layer1-mask50.dxf. A fractional depth writes its point as an underscore, mask47_5.

Cut contours

Cut contours are one file per sheet. Every sheet is cut through, and depth comes from stacking the cut sheets: a 100 µm chamber over 50 µm channels is one sheet cut with both, over a sheet cut with the chamber alone. The sheet below the deepest feature is the backing. It is uncut, so it gets no file.

A file is numbered by its position, counted from the patterned face inward: chip-Chip-layer1-sheet1.dxf.

The same file set

The depths a mask set splits on and the boundaries a sheet stack cuts at are the same numbers, so both deliverables write the same number of files, over the same footprints. They differ in what a name means, a depth exposed or a position in the stack, and in how an island is drawn (→ Islands).

Ticking both writes both sets, which is what one layer going to two shops needs.

Secondary-op table

A secondary-op table lists the holes a shop makes after forming — punched ports, drilled vias — one row each. It is a CSV, not a drawing, because a hole is specified as a call-out: where, which tool, what size, in which setup.

Which file a hole lands in follows from when it is cut, which is the stage on its bore:

Before assembly — the hole is punched in a loose sheet, so it is a row in that sheet’s own table, chip-Chip-layer1-ops.csv, beside that layer’s contours. A hole crossing two layers is a row in each: two sheets, two setups.
After assembly — the hole is drilled through the bonded stack, so it is one row in chip-Chip-assembly-ops.csv, whatever it passes through. That file belongs to the device, not to a layer, and the export dialog offers it in its own After assembly section.

A hole with no way out of the finished part — a via buried between two layers — is always cut before assembly, whatever the stage says, and the bore’s stage row in the inspector shows that with its reason rather than the setting underneath.

Both files lead with # lines stating the units, the compensation, and what one row is. A layer table’s columns are the reference number, the position, the diameter, the operation and the face the tool comes in at. The assembly table adds the exterior face the tool enters, how deep it goes, which layers it passes through, and whether it breaks out the far side — a drill that stops inside the stack is a blind hole, and the depth is the number the operator sets.

Two things are left out of both, and only these two: a hole formed by the tool itself (molded in) is not a secondary operation, and two channels on adjacent layers that already meet across their shared face need no tool at all.

The diameter is never compensated. A 0.75 mm punch is the tool you own, not a boundary to correct. Positions are a different question: a layer table’s positions carry the same compensation as the contours they are cut beside, so a hole lands on its channel; the assembly table is nominal throughout, since it is measured against a finished part. Each file says which.

Part solid

The finished layer as an exact 3D solid — described but not written by this version. A process may publish it anyway. See Export for what the dialog does with a deliverable it cannot write.

What the presets publish

Soft lithography — Mask set.
Laser cutting and Xurography — Cut contours.
Injection molding, Micromilling and Hot embossing — Part solid.

The last three publish only an artifact this version cannot write, so a stack formed by one of them exports no files until you tick something else. No preset publishes the secondary-op table yet — add it to a process’s list when the shop wants one.

Inside an exported file

The drawings are DXF and the tables are CSV. Coordinates are written in mm, while every length in the app is µm. R2000 states the unit in the file and R12 cannot, and the note under the export dialog’s version picker says so; a CSV has no in-file way to state units at all, so it says so in a leading # line.

The rest of this section is about the drawings.

The difference shows in a square pocket with an island of material standing in the middle. It exports as one mask file and one cut-contour file, and the two draw that island differently.

The design behind both exported files: a square pocket with an island of material standing in it

Closed contours only

Every contour is a closed polyline, and no open path is ever written. Job software reads intent from topology: a closed contour bounds a region and takes a tool offset, an open path is a literal centre-line cut.

Islands

A closed polyline states nothing about its relationship to any other one, and readers disagree about what a loop inside a loop means: three interpretations are in use, one adding every area, one alternating in and out, one counting winding.

A mask set file therefore carries no clockwise loop at all. An island — a post standing in a chamber, the middle of an O — is spliced into the contour around it by a zero-width slit, leaving one closed counter-clockwise contour per disjoint void. The area reads the same under all three interpretations.

The mask file: one closed contour, the island bridged into it by a zero-width slit at the right

Cut contours keep the nested ring. A cutter cuts every closed loop it is handed, so nesting says what it should: a clockwise contour inside another is an island left standing. A slit would be a cut through solid material.

The cut-contour file: two nested closed contours, the inner one the island left standing

Each file states which of the two it is, in the note under the drawing.

Drawing layers and notes

Geometry goes on a drawing layer named for the artifact, MASK50 or SHEET2. The statements go on a layer named NOTES, below the geometry, where they cannot be mistaken for a contour. Every file carries its process’s compensation statement and the sentence saying how to read its contours.

Rounded corners are written as true arcs rather than as short segments, so the radius in the file is exact.

Experiware Guide