noble eagle
Say you didn't care about making it better or unique in any way, and just decided "we're going to make 5 new board layouts using the exact same tech as the 60HE, but in a different shape and format"
How much work does that take? Is it as simple as dragging some icons around and clicking "send to board printer", or does it take months workshopping the design with your entire team? What sorts of challenges do you face that aren't obvious on the face of it?
north osprey
In short, it’s a l o t more work than that unless you want to release non-compliant products with copy pasted designs at a small quantity.
noble eagle
In short, it’s a l o t more work than that unless you want to release non-compli...
What do you mean by "non-compliant"? Compliant with what? And I think the main part of what I'm asking is why are copy pasted designs bad in this context?
north osprey
I read a bit too fast through it and misunderstood the main question.
It is possible to take 1 design philosophy and mechanical construction and then just apply it to multiple layouts. There is that the volume of work involved requires quite a bit hands, as every layout needs to go through scrutiny.
What makes this a bit more tricky is that not every layout can or should be constructed in the same way or can entirely fit the design.
Take the 60HE, it’s basically a pcb with keys in a bucket. The 80HE however is a pcb with keys sandwiched by 2 cases.
If you’d throw the 80HE in a bucket case, you get large accentuating openings around the keys where there are no keys. This will look completely different even if you had the same design.