BoardSurfers: Training Insights: Manually Placing Components in Allegro PCB Editor

Component placement is one of the most critical aspects of PCB designing. As the number of components and layers increases, the complexities of placing components increase manifold. Allegro® PCB Editor, with its streamlined and efficient component placement, lets you handle these complexities with ease.

Using the manual placement process, components on the canvas can be placed individually, or simultaneously on the canvas. For instance, you choose to place all input/output components one at a time, then all ICs one in one go, followed by all discrete components. Allegro PCB Editor provides an easy-to-use graphical interface that helps you choose components for fast and optimum placement.

In this blog post, we will discuss how to select and place components in a design from the Placement dialog. Using various filters, you can choose components based on different placement criteria. You can prioritize component placement based on manufacturing requirements to ensure the accurate functioning of the design.

Selecting Components to be Placed

Use the Placement dialog box to manually select and place components on the canvas. To open the Placement dialog box, choose Place – Manually. Alternatively, you can type placementedit followed by place manual in the Command window.

The Placement dialog box displays a list of all the components under the Placement List tab that are categorized by refdes, net group, and module instances amongst others as illustrated in the following image.

          

To select a single component, click the checkbox to the left of the component name. The graphical representation of its footprint symbol is displayed in the Quickview window. In case you do not see the symbol, verify the symbol library path in the User Preferences Editor and look for padpath and pasmpath values.

                                                                     

Placing a Component

Once you select the component, move your cursor to the design canvas and place it wherever needed. As soon as you place the component on the design canvas, its representation changes from green from pink with a symbol “P” on it.

To get a better view of the design while placing a component, use the Hide button. To see the Placement dialog again, right-click on the canvas and choose Show.

                          

To avoid hiding and showing the Placement dialog repeatedly, select AutoHide from the Advanced Settings tab. The dialog automatically disappears at the time of placing the component and reappears after the component is placed.

                                                                   

The List construction option in the Advanced Settings tab displays symbol definitions from either the design database or the library.

Filtering Components Displayed in the Placement List

The Placement dialog contains a set of selection filters that limits the display of components in the Placement List available for selection.

                                                                    

Let’s take a quick look at these filter options:

Match	Finds component by the name.
Property	Filter components according to their values.
Rooms	Enlists all the available components that have Room property assigned to them.
Part #	Lists all the components with the part number you specify. You can browse to open the part number list.
Net	Displays components that are connected to a specific net.
Net group	Displays components that are connected to a specific net group.
Schematic page number	Displays components that are placed on a specific schematic page.
Place by Refdes	Filters components by part type.

 

This is how you manually place components from the filtered list construction of the components and prioritize component placement based on manufacturing requirements, to ensure correct functioning and peak performance of the design.

To learn in detail about this flow, watch Placing Components using the place manual command in Allegro PCB Editor training byte on the Cadence Support portal. Click the training byte link know or visit Cadence Support and search for this training byte under Video Library.

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