Cadence Community

BoardSurfers: What's Happening Around 17.4-2019?

By mrigashira | 15 Nov 2019

Allegro and OrCAD 17.4-2019 was released on October 18 and we have since then been getting a lot of queries about a lot of things. How do I install the products? What are the system requirements? What has changed? What's there in it for me? Is there ...

0 Comments

Tags:

17.4 | PCB Editor | SKILL
What's in a Name? From Allegro EDM to Pulse in 17.4-2019

By Auromala | 11 Nov 2019

Allegro EDM (Engineering Data Management) 17.4-2019 is out! So, what's in it for you?

0 Comments

Tags:

allegro edm | what's new | 17.4-2019 | PCB design | Pulse
Cadence OrCAD and Allegro 17.4-2019 is Now Available

By AllegroReleaseTeam | 4 Nov 2019

Here is a sleeker and more modern version of the OrCAD and Allegro release, with enhanced usability and a slew of new productivity-enhancing features. With the 17.4-2019 release, you get more intuitive and easy-to-use flows that enable optimized schematic-to-board-to-...

0 Comments

Tags:

Library Creator | System Capture | 17.4 | IC Packaging | OrCAD Capture | APD | PSPICE | PCB Editor | Constraint Manager | Topology Explorer
BoardSurfers: Going Beyond Just Correct - Improving and Optimizing Design and Routing

By mrigashira | 28 Oct 2019

PCB layout editors provide many checks in the form of constraints and rules to ensure your design is correct. You even have the DFM rules to prevent fabrication or manufacturing issues. Then you have automatic routing to ensure an errorless board with the right connections and traces. But are you satisfied only with 'just a correct' board? Or, do you want to optimize it further? And what about 'quality'?

0 Comments

Tags:

APD | PCB Editor
DATA Pulse: Collaborate and Combine Forces – Allegro EDM Team Design

By Auromala | 14 Oct 2019

Working in an ECAD design team? Want to control access to certain design elements? Would notifications of design changes by other team members be helpful? If yes…

0 Comments

Tags:

allegro edm | Team design | PCB design
BoardSurfers: PCB Electronics - Three Routing Challenges and Their Solutions

By mrigashira | 27 Sep 2019

Routing is the core of a PCB. And, it's not an easy task. There are many challenges but, thankfully, there are solutions too. Here we list three common challenges and explain how to solve them.

0 Comments

Tags:

PCB Layout and routing | PCB Editor
BoardSurfers: PCB Electronics - Defining and Applying Physical and Spacing Constraints

By mrigashira | 17 Sep 2019

If you get frequent calls from your fab houses or your customers regarding your product, or if your schematic, layout, and packaging engineers spend a lot of time exchanging notes about their requirements not being met, resulting in back and forth of designs, or if you believe, like most of us do, that a product should do what it was designed to do, constraints are your friends.

0 Comments

Tags:

APD | PCB Editor | Constraint Manager
DATA Pulse: Track Your Components—Efficient Library and Design Data Management

By Auromala | 15 Sep 2019

Ever noticed how some objects always mysteriously disappear? It's like they have their own legs. Or maybe, secretly, they thirst for adventure and go wandering off. Socks for example. Why does one twin always disappear after a round in the washing machine? After a few months, you just have a sad pile of lonely, orphaned socks in a variety of colors. Pens are equally guilty. They're always disappearing. Pen caps are even...

0 Comments

Tags:

lifecycle | RAK | Allegro
BoardSurfers: PCB Electronics - Electrical Constraints

By mrigashira | 10 Sep 2019

Whether it's NASA's space missions or a school camping trip; building a cutting-edge, reusable rocket system or baking a simple lemon tart - planning is a must to avoid disasters, or at least to get a predictable output. So is the case with PCBs. You want to plan ahead to avoid design mistakes that can cost you money and time. And that's where constraints come handy.

0 Comments

Tags:

Constraint Manager | Allegro Package Designer | Allegro PCB Editor | SiP Layout
BoardSurfers: PCB Electronics - Component Placement - Get Set and Go!

By mrigashira | 3 Sep 2019

How do you place components on a PCB design? Manually? Or quickly using automation? Is there a way to rotate or mirror components while placing them? Is there a way to determine the congested areas or the flow within blocks even while placing components? How do you ensure the placed components are aligned? How o you verify all is well with the board? Read on for the answers.

0 Comments

Tags:

PCB Editor
BoardSurfers: PCB Design Technique for Designing a Small RF Section in a Digital Board

By Surender | 28 Aug 2019

Are you designing a 5G or radar application, or for that matter any application, that requires RF components? Are cost, size-reduction, and performance improvement major concerns for you? Most probably they are. Here we talk about an innovative solution for mixed-signal RF designs using Cadence layout editors.

0 Comments

Tags:

5G | RF PCB | Allegro PCB Editor
BoardSurfers: PCB Electronics - Six Things to Do Before You Actually Place Components on a PCB

By mrigashira | 20 Aug 2019

It's a PCB you are designing. Where do you start? What can you do to make your process more productive and efficient? Are you feeling at lost? Worry not. We will talk about the six things you do before you start placing components on the board, and, of course, if you use PCB Editor, there is the Design Workflow guide to ease the board design process for you.

0 Comments

Tags:

PCB Editor
DATA Pulse: Playing Favorites with Parts—Influencing Design Part Selection with a Preferred Parts List

By Auromala | 18 Aug 2019

Life is full of decisions - what college major to opt for, which career path to follow, whether to move cities for a job or stay put, whether to switch career paths midstream for a more fulfilling life. You know what I mean. As a librarian, your professional life is as full of choices and decisions to be made. OK, so maybe they're not as life changing as the ones I've just listed, but they're important. However, it...

0 Comments

Tags:

allegro edm | PCB design
BoardSurfers: Five Ways to View Your Design in 3D Canvas

By Monika | 13 Aug 2019

Five simple yet effective ways to increase efficiency by selecting the right objects you want to model, say, all the pins or a subset of the pins in a design.

0 Comments

Tags:

3D Canvas | 3d view | PCB Editor | 3D | 3D viewer
BoardSurfers - Aerials and Bails: How to Rename Reference Designators Using Batch Command

By Monika | 6 Aug 2019

Components on a board are often placed per their functional group and hence their reference designators are all jumbled up. It is a common practice to rename reference designators before sending out the design data to manufacturers. Reference designator...

0 Comments

Tags:

PCB Editor | Allegro PCB Editor
BoardSurfers: Capturing Design Intent for Automatic Routing in PCB Editor

By mrigashira | 31 Jul 2019

Imagine you are designing a complex board with thousands of interconnects and all the usual complexities inherent in a dense design that is also highly constrained. Well, it's easy, the 'imagine' part; and you don't even have to try like John Lennon had crooned in his Imagine song, because most probably you are actually designing one right now that is dominated by bussed interconnect. And most probably your mind is stretched...

0 Comments

Tags:

PCB Editor
BoardSurfers: Designing a Rigid-Flex Board Using PCB Editor

By mrigashira | 26 Jul 2019

Whether you are designing the latest pace-maker or a LED strip, you have definitely pondered awhile about rigid PCBs and flex PCBs. You might have gone through a pile of literature, called up friends who have already done it (after all flex PCBs have been around for more than half a century now), and deliberated with your team to finally settle on a rigid-flex PCB. Well, what had started as a cutting-edge requirement...

0 Comments

Tags:

PCB Editor | Rigid-Flex
DATA Pulse: In Search of the Perfect Environment—Configuring Allegro EDM

By Auromala | 22 Jul 2019

Ah, the office temperature – that eternal debate. As in many offices, ours has some people who feel that they're in the Sahara Desert, others who bundle up like they're in Antarctica, a few who just don't care about the temperature, and some who can't quite figure out if they're ever comfortable, like Goldilocks. There is however no 'perfect' temperature. So many variables impact the physical environment of the office...

0 Comments

Tags:

allegro edm | PCB design
BoardSurfers: Avoid Iterations with Your Manufacturing Partner – Detect and Address DFM Issues in the Design Phase Using DesignTrue DFM

By mrigashira | 16 Jul 2019

Some things are rare, good or bad, but they do happen from time to time. And, some happen so regularly, we often take them for granted if good or learn to live with them if bad. But should we? For example, you send out your design for fabrication and the CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) engineer runs a high-end design for manufacturability (DFM) analysis software. The CAM engineer sees DFM issues (almost always!)....

0 Comments

Tags:

DesignTrue | Allegro PCB Editor
BoardSurfers: Look Before You Leap - Verifying Footprints in the Design Capture Phase

By mrigashira | 9 Jul 2019

View the footprints of symbols during design entry in Capture: verify the footprint and land pattern dimension before exporting your design to a board layout tool, such as PCB Editor,

0 Comments

Tags:

Capture CIS | PCB Editor | footprint viewer
BoardSurfers - Guest Roll: Anatomy of a Good Testcase

By Tyler | 2 Jul 2019

Rik Lee, the author of today's post, is a PCB Designer with more than 35 years experience in the PCB industry, 25+ of those with the Cadence® Allegro® tools. Currently working with Samtec, he has previously worked for both Cadence and EMA, focusing on back-end PCB layout tool support. You come across an issue when using the tools, but you don’t understand why. Being able to troubleshoot an issue, and if needed provide...

0 Comments

Tags:

APD | PCB Editor | SiP Layout
DATA Pulse: Know How to Effectively Manage Part Obsolescence (Part 2 of 2)

By Auromala | 2 Jul 2019

In part 1 of this two-part blog post, we analyzed how you can define a parts lifecycle manager, define and assign lifecycle states to parts, then distribute the latest parts to designers. In part 2, you're the designer and you want to know which parts to use in your design. The initial PCB design – how did you come up with it? Doodled it on a piece of paper? Hashed it out in conference room meetings where at least...

0 Comments

Tags:

Library and design data management | EDM | PCB design
BoardSurfers - Aerials and Bails: Take a Walk on the Wild Side...with Auto-Roaming

By Tyler | 25 Jun 2019

We have had this question before, so it’s a good one to remind everyone of in case you’re not aware of it. What I usually hear asked is how can you have the tool automatically pan/roam when your cursor gets to the edge of the canvas. The good news is that this is there today for you; it may just be that you don’t realize it! To make sure that you don’t pan the canvas at times when you don’t intend to, you will have...

0 Comments

Tags:

APD | PCB Editor | SiP Layout
BoardSurfers - Aerials and Bails: How to Split a Viastack

By Monika | 20 Jun 2019

Today’s compact and powerful devices require small and high-density PCBs. Tight routing around densely packed components is thus indispensable, but cannot be achieved using conventional blind-buried and through-hole vias. Consequently, stacked vias have become an essential element of contemporary PCB designs. Stacked vias can be used in place of through-hole vias by placing multiple vias exactly over each other, taking...

0 Comments

Tags:

APD | PCB Editor | SiP Layout | Allegro
DATA Pulse: Know How to Effectively Manage Part Obsolescence (Part 1 of 2)

By Auromala | 16 Jun 2019

This is the first of a two-part blog post on managing part obsolescence using Allegro ® EDM applications. In the midst of a periodic bout of decluttering the house, my niece stumbled across some cassettes and looked at them like they were from some prehistoric age. How could I convey the importance of the audio cassette to my niece? She's used to iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, and goodness knows what else. I remember cassettes...

0 Comments

Tags:

allegro edm | Library and design data management | EDM | PCB design

PCB Design Blogs