Minimize Your Mouse Clicks in IC Packaging with New Customizable Wire Bond Application Mode in 16.6

Whether it is reducing mouse clicks, minimizing access to menus, eliminating the need to modify the find filter, or providing direct access to change options panel settings without leaving the canvas, anything that can be done to improve the efficiency of your design flow saves you time. And saving time means getting designs out on -- or even ahead -- of schedule.

With that in mind, Cadence APD and SiP tools offer a new wire bonding application mode in the 16.6 release which allows you to dramatically streamline your bonding design flow. The new application mode allows you to perform bonding operations in a manner that tightly integrates the bond shell design with other commands like show element, measure, and etch editing. By saving you time on the parts of your design flow you do the most, Cadence tools allow you to complete your design faster and make sure you meet those key timelines. 

To learn more about how the wire bond application mode can improve your efficiency and simplify your design process, read on!

Create and Edit Your Wire Bonds Without Ever Using the Options Panel

Prior to 16.6, in order to edit wire bond objects in your design, the first step was to run a wire bonding command from the Route -> Wire Bond menu. The "Select" command provided you with a general purpose environment, while other commands provided you with more targeted find filter settings and command lists.

New to 16.6, the wire bond application mode provides you with direct access to all the wire bonding capabilities without ever going to the menus. For example, when you click a bond finger while the wire bond app mode is active, you get a right mouse button menu that looks like the image below:

From this menu, you have direct access to anything that you can do to that bond finger. Whether you want to move, delete, copy, or change the finger padstack, everything is a click away. At any time, you may access the wire bond global settings or the bond wire profile definitions through the quick utilities.

Once you've picked an action to perform on your selected item and the command starts, such as moving, changing, or adding a wire bond, the right mouse button menu changes to give you access to the parameters in the options tab. Do you need to change the alignment style of a bond finger while you're moving it? There is no need to take your mouse away from the design canvas to change fields on the options tab! Change the setting from the RMB menu and get back to your bond shell edits faster.

Perhaps you want to move a bond finger to minimum DRC clearance from its neighbor. Change your bubble mode to "Hug only" from the RMB menu and bump up against the other finger. Whatever your needs, going to the options tab - or the find filter - to change settings is virtually a thing of the past!

Take Your Productivity Further with Customized Double-Click and Drop Operations

Once you've grown accustomed to the new application mode use model for wire bonding, consider taking things one step further. The APD and SiP tools provide you with a way to tailor the app mode's behavior to your exact needs by configuring what commands run when you double-click or drag an item.

Do you find yourself doing a lot of bond finger customization to change padstacks for double- and triple-bonding? Consider setting the double-click operation for bond fingers to "change", and have the tool automatically put you into the change characteristics command whenever you double-click on a bond finger. No right mouse button menus necessary!

Or, perhaps you are finished laying out your initial bond finger pattern and have progressed to routing your design. Reconfigure the same double-click on a bond finger to now run the edit routing stubs command. If you move between the two stages with regularity, you can even define a function key alias to change the command run when you double click.

Whatever your needs,  whether you want to drag a bond finger along a path or view/edit a power/ground ring's parameters, the IC package tools are waiting to be set up to make you as productive as possible. So, upgrade to 16.6 today and take your wire bonding to the next level with the new application mode. If you have a comment or suggestion for improving your productivity, we'd love to hear from you!

Jeff Gallagher