Stack window

The Stack window is where a stack is authored: how many layers it has, how thick each one is, what it is made of and how it is formed. It opens from Design → Stack… or from the pencil in the Layers section, and like the Fab processes window it floats over the layout, leaving the design editable underneath.

It edits whichever stack the strip shows, which need not be the active one, so you can shape a production stack while a prototype one drives the viewport. Every value here is a design edit and one undo step; an edit to a stack that is not active changes nothing on screen until you make it active.

The stack strip

The picker lists the design’s stacks, and choosing one says which stack the rows below edit. It does not make that stack active, and it costs no undo step.

+ adds a stack by duplicating the shown one. The trash removes it, and is refused twice over: a design keeps at least one stack, and the active stack cannot be removed. Make another active first; the tooltip says which of the two applies.

The row underneath either shows the ● active marker or offers Make active, which switches the viewport to this stack. The name field beside it renames the stack on Enter or focus loss.

The stack’s own rows

base layer is the layer of this stack the open component anchors at — its layer 0 sits there. The list spans this stack’s own layers, so the pick is always in range.

fab process names the process this stack’s layers are formed with, chosen from the design’s pool. It is the default every layer inherits, and it decides which wall kinds can be formed, which design rules are checked, and what export writes. Editing the process itself is the Fab processes window’s job.

registration is how the layers are located against one another, and the picker offers Common datum, Sequential · RSS and Sequential · worst case. See Layers, stacks & processes for what each one does.

The layer rows

There is one row per layer, the top of the stack first and the substrate last: a swatch in the layer’s viewport color, shaded by its default face, then Layer N, then a delete at the right end.

Clicking the label opens that layer’s detail underneath it, and clicking it again closes it. This is the window’s own selection and has nothing to do with the active layer.

The delete is refused for the last layer — a stack keeps at least one — and for a layer carrying content, which has to be emptied first. Only the active stack has the design built onto it, so on any other stack only the last-layer rule applies.

Add layer at the foot adds one on top, as a copy of the topmost slab.

A layer’s detail

The detail is a grid of labeled rows: thickness, face, depth, walls, process, material and bond below.

thickness is the slab’s own thickness, in µm. Drag it and the viewport follows; release to commit.

face is the side features are cut in from by default, Top or Bottom, and depth is how far in, in µm. Both are defaults the children on this layer inherit and may override.

walls is the default wall profile, and its kind list is only what the process forming this layer can form. Under a per-layer override that is the layer’s own process, not the stack’s. A stored kind the process cannot form still shows as the selection; see Design rules for what the report says about it.

Beside the kind sits its parameter, in µm radius or ° draft. While it is unset the field shows the process’s forming value dimmed, marked · process, so it follows a later process edit. Typing or dragging a number overrides it, and the ✕ that appears removes the override again.

process is the layer’s own forming process. Its first entry is inherit, and it names what it inherits (inherit (soft-lithography)), so an unassigned layer still says which process forms it. Picking a pool process instead is how a laminated film sits over a molded body in one design. It moves the wall list above, the rules that layer is checked against, and what export writes for it.

material identifies the layer’s material by number, with a backing checkbox that reveals a second one: a laminate backing slab of that material filling below the deepest feature.

bond below is the alignment tolerance of the joint between this layer and the one under it, in µm align. Layer 0 has nothing under it, so its detail has no such row.

See also

• Layers, stacks & processes — the stack, the bond, faces, depth and the roof.
• Fabrication overrides — how a child departs from the defaults this window sets.
• Layers — the panel section that picks the active stack, the anchor and what is visible.
• Fab processes window — where the processes these rows choose from are authored.
• Export — what the stack’s layers produce as files.