Assembly or Inspection Documents: Sample of How to Create Process Documents

Creating assembly process or inspection documents is straightforward using Unisoft software. Component part numbers can be broken down into steps, with unique colors and brush patterns assigned to each part number. This allows for the creation of assembly or inspection process documents and kitting labels of various types, a sample of which is shown in the following two figures.

Process outline:

The following process outline provides a brief overview of creating process assembly or inspection documents. It assumes some basic working knowledge of the software, so certain fundamental steps will not be detailed. 

For more details than those outlined below, contact Unisoft or refer to the manual section "Tutorial 1 — Creating assembly/process sheets, annotation overlays, and kitting labels" by  clicking here  and following the procedure outlined.  

There are basically four steps to creating assembly or inspection documents:

1. Assign Step Numbers to the part numbers on the PCB (optional but normally done)
2. Assign unique colors and brush patterns to the part numbers (optional but normally done)
3. Add annotation overlays to Steps (optional but normally done)
4. Print the assembly or inspection documents

• First, we will divide the board assembly into three steps.
• Second, unique colors and brush patterns will be assigned to the component part numbers in each step.
• Next, annotation overlays will be added to the steps.
• Then, the assembly documents will be printed.

Step 1.  For the process outlined here we are using the sample3.f2b board data file located in the directory c:\program files (x86)\unisoft\data-files . You can open that PCB file if you wish.

Next for our sample PCB assembly in the figure below, Step 1 is assigned to the first part number, Step 2 to the second part number, and Step 3 to the remaining part numbers. 

As illustrated in the figure below, this is done by double clicking on the part number in the Smart Color window at the bottom of the display, then in the "Edit Steps, Operations, and/or Sequence"
window, edit the "Step" field to the desired number. Click "OK" when finished.   If desired, you can further add Substeps to these steps to further breakdown these operations.  

Note: When a PCB is first imported into the Unisoft software all part numbers are assigned to Step 1. 

Step 2. At this point, either automatically or manually assign colors and brush patterns to part numbers and components.

Before the colors and brush patterns are assigned to the part numbers and components, you can choose which ones you wish to use.  To do this, as in the picture below, first click  "Color All P/N's"  then click  "Select Colors/Brush Patterns".  In the  "Select Colors/Brush Patterns"  window, select the colors and brush patterns you want by checking or unchecking the boxes desired. Click "OK" when finished.

Now, in our sample PCB in the figure below, the colors and brush patterns are assigned automatically, so red is assigned to Step 1, green to Step 2, and so on.   To do this, first click "Color All P/N's,"
then in the "Select Components" window, click the assign color settings that you wish (use the settings in the picture below), and then click "OK".  The colors and brush patterns are then assigned to
the part numbers and components. 

Step 3. Optionally add annotation overlays to steps. For example, in the figure below, the annotation overlays named "SAMPLE2-hand-insert-diodes" and "SAMPLE2-legend-box", that are outlined
in red on the image below, are assigned to Step number 2. So, when Step 2 is printed, only these two annotation overlays will appear on that step.

To do this, as illustrated in the figure below, click on "Add F2P's to Steps".  In the "Associate F2P's with Steps" window, select the step and then the desired overlay .F2P document or documents you
wish to be displayed at that step. Click "OK" when finished.  

Step 4. Print out the assembly document using the format shown in the figure below by selecting all steps and choosing the "Single page each step..." option.   Note, this "Single page each step..." format, while less detailed, is popular because it combines the drawing and assembly load list on a single page for each step, making it visually efficient for assembly operators.

To do this, first click on "Print Assembly Documents" as shown in the picture below. Next, use the settings illustrated in the figure below in the "Select Documents to Print" window. Click "OK"
and choose the desired printer format, for example, print to a PDF document, printer, etc.

If desired, PCB photos, gerber silkscreen overlays, part number barcodes, and other options can be added to the documents. 

Note: There are several options for different types of process documents that can be created.  For example, the "Separate pages each step" option in the "Select Documents to Print" window creates a process document with more detail but more pages.   Another example is using Microsoft Powerpoint to create the process document. 

The assembly document created contains all three steps with unique colors. For example, as can be seen in the figure below, for Step 2 in the printout, the part number was assigned the color green, and all the components with that part number are colored green. 

C_AI_7-2024