Corral Your Selections with New Lasso and Path Modes in 16.6 APD and SiP

The level of ease and efficiency you experience in selecting the items needed for modifying in your substrate can mean the difference between a great design experience and an exercise in frustration and futility. With the 16.6 release, Cadence IC Packaging tools now offer an extended array of selection capabilities, with new lasso and path selection styles joining the existing pick, window, temp group, and polygon selection models. 

With lasso, you reign in items by holding your mouse button down and drawing a free-form boundary around them. Anything inside or touching that boundary will get selected. Or use a path, and hold your mouse down while drawing a line on the canvas. If an item touches that path, it gets selected. In either case, turn what would have previously taken multiple clicks in your canvas or multiple area windows into a single quick and easy operation familiar to anyone who uses a drawing or drafting tool.

Want to know more about these new performance-enhancing selection models? Read on!

Selecting Items using a Lasso

From any application mode, use a lasso to quickly select a set of items which you cannot easily pick using a traditional combination of picks and windows. To activate the lasso, click your right mouse button in the main canvas, and select the lasso from the "Selection set."

You're now ready to go. Holding your mouse cursor down, all you need to do is draw a loop around your desired items. This loop can even take the form of a shape like a figure 8. Whatever is contained within either side of the shape gets selected. Don't even worry about completing the lasso itself! When you get to the point where a straight line back to the start of your loop will get the right items, just let go of your mouse; the tool will do the rest of the work for you.

Take a look at the example below. With a single selection--rather than four window selections--all your signal pins and none of the power or ground pins have been selected.

Do you find yourself using lasso selection frequently? Consider aliasing this selection mode (or the polygon/path modes) to a function key for immediate access any time you need it!

Selecting Items using a Path

Using path selection is very similar to lasso-based selection. However, rather than drawing a closed area in which the items will be selected, draw a line through the items and let the tool do the rest of the work for you. This mode is ideal for selecting things that are on a diagonal or rounded path - bond fingers being a perfect example.

In the image below, we've selected all the bond fingers on the outside tier. Using a window or pick selection, this would take many mouse clicks to get just right. Even selecting by lasso or polygon would be an exercise in frustration. But not with a path selection! Draw a quick line through the fingers and you are all set!

If you do predominantly arc guide path wire bonding, you might consider making a script which will set up aliases for the path selection mode and any other bonding-related tasks before launching the wire bond application mode (also new to 16.6!). Then, run the script whenever you need to work on your wire bond patterns and maximize your efficiency.