Fab processes window

The Fab processes window is where a process is authored. It opens from Design → Fab processes… or from the toolbar’s Fab processes button, and it floats over the layout: you can draw, and watch the Problems section recompute, while it is open.

Processes are a shared pool, so the window edits whichever process the strip shows, which need not be the one the viewport is built with. You can tune a molding profile while a soft-lithography stack drives the display. Which process a stack is built with is set in the Stack window.

The Fab processes window: the pool strip and name over the preset, deliverables, compensation, corner radii, wall kinds and the rule deck

The process strip

The picker lists the design’s processes, and choosing one says which process the rows below edit. It changes nothing about the design and costs no undo step.

Beside it sit three buttons. + opens a menu of the built-in presets and creates a fresh process from the one you pick. The copy button duplicates the shown process under a new name, which is how you diverge from a preset you have already tuned. The trash removes it, and is refused while any stack references it; the tooltip names the stacks to reassign first. That also covers the last process — with one left, every stack references it — so a design can never be left without one.

The row underneath reads who is using it: used by stacks: proto, prod, or not referenced by any stack. The name field beside it renames the process on Enter or focus loss; the stacks pointing at it follow the rename.

The preset row

Load preset reseeds the whole process from a built-in preset, as one undo step. See Layers, stacks & processes for what loading replaces and what it leaves alone.

Loading is one-way, and the control never reads back which preset a process came from.

Deliverables

The list holds the artifacts this process publishes; tick the ones the shop it goes to wants. A preset has the usual choice for its route already ticked, and sending a stack two ways takes one more tick. See Deliverables for what each one is and what it writes.

A row marked not exported yet is an artifact that is described and this version cannot write — the part solid. Tick one anyway when it is what the shop takes — the export dialog then keeps its row too.

Leaving the list empty is allowed. It says this process publishes nothing, and the export dialog names each layer it leaves without files.

Compensation

Shrink measured is off until someone has measured how this process’s finished parts compare to the drawn size, and while it is off the row reads not measured. Ticking it reveals a percent field for the measured shrink, with the correction it derives shown dimmed beside it (→ export scales ×1.00503). You author the shrink because that is the number a datasheet quotes and a test part gives; the scale is what export applies.

The dim sentence under the row is the statement every exported file will carry. Ticking the box and typing 0 claims parts land on size; leaving it unticked says nobody has checked.

Corner radii

The two fields in µm, inner (void) and outer (material), are the radii this process forms at a corner of the void and at a corner of the material, and 0 in either is a sharp corner. See Fabrication overrides for the two authoring tiers that override these.

Wall kinds

There is one row per profile — Vertical, Fillet, Draft — each with a checkbox saying whether the process can form it. A kind left unticked cannot be chosen anywhere the design authors walls.

Fillet and Draft take a parameter, and a ticked row carries its forming default beside the checkbox, in µm radius or ° draft. A row with no default published reads a dimmed 0, which means the author supplies the parameter per feature. Vertical takes none, so its row is the checkbox alone.

Unticking a kind the design is already using is allowed and changes no geometry. See Design rules for what the Problems section then reports.

Openings

The four rows say how this process cuts the holes that reach a channel — a punched inlet, a via between two slabs, a well into a chamber. punch size is the diameter in µm, operation is what cuts it (punch, drill, molded in) and stage is whether it happens before the sheets are bonded or through the finished stack.

pad offset is how far the channel is widened where a hole lands on it, in µm. A punch is millimetres across and a channel is tens of microns wide, so without a pad the tool has to hit a line; the pad flares the channel’s end into a round tip the hole sits inside, and does the same at a junction or a via. It applies at every layer the hole touches, including the one it lands on — which is what keeps a via connected when the slabs shift slightly against each other. The presets ship 0, which changes no geometry, so set it once you know the margin your shop needs.

These are the shop’s answers, and every opening in the design takes them unless its own terminal says otherwise, so setting drill here is one edit rather than one per port. A terminal that does author a value keeps it; see the bore rows in the Inspector.

The process a stack is built with answers for every opening in it, including one crossing two slabs whose layers are formed by different processes: an opening goes through the part rather than being formed in one layer, so the part’s own process is the one that owns it.

The rule deck

☐ name │ threshold │ ✕

The deck lists one row per rule the app knows, whether or not this process carries it. The checkbox says whether the deck carries that rule. Ticked, the rule is checked and the row shows its threshold; unticked, the rule is not checked at all, which is what an absent rule means. Ticking one seeds a starting threshold at Error severity for you to type over.

The severity button flips ✕ error and ⚠ warning — the two glyphs the Problems section uses.

Two rules are authorable but have no checker, and their rows say not checked yet — ticked or not, and on every process. No preset enables either, so ticking one is what makes the Problems section repeat it under the report. See Design rules for which two they are.

Most thresholds are one number: µm for a length, × for a ratio, or a bare count. These carry more:

Min inner radius and Min outer radius have a floor checkbox. Unticked, the rule reads the process’s own forming radius live and the row says = forming default; ticked, it is an explicit floor, seeded at that radius and then relaxed downward.
Fits extent has a shape picker — disc with a ⌀, or rect with a width and a height — and a margin, all in µm.
Allowed depths opens an indented list of intervals, one row each: a min, a max checkbox that closes the interval (unticked, the row reads open), the max field when closed, and a trash. The + below adds an interval. An empty list checks nothing.
Allowed depth increments starts with a picker for how your shop produces the material between two depths. From stock opens an indented list of the thicknesses you buy — one µm field and a trash per row, + to add one — and a step is fine when it can be stacked from them, in any combination and with repeats. An empty list checks nothing. At least is the other shop: you make the slice rather than buying it, so the row takes a single µm field and any step at or above it passes. Switching carries your number across.

Every number here can be dragged as well as typed. A drag previews as you go and commits as one undo step when you release, and the Problems section catches up at that point rather than on every tick of the drag.

Editing a process no stack is built with rebuilds nothing — it is still a design edit, and it still costs an undo step.

Experiware Guide