What's Good About Allegro PCB Editor Thieving? 16.6 Has Several New Enhancements!

The following enhancements have been made to the 16.6 Allegro PCB Editor Thieving application.

Thieving outline: New ‘Rectangle’ option added to the list. If selected, the user is required to make only two digitizations of a rubber-banded rectangle.

Thieving style: A new ‘Line’ setting has been added to the existing ones of ‘Circle’ and ‘Rectangle’. The fill elements will be created as actual cline/line segment entities as opposed to via entities for ‘Circle’ or ‘Rectangle’. The options settings for both ‘Size X’ and ‘Size Y’ must be specified where the lesser value will be the width of the segment, and the greater value the length of the segment. Therefore horizontal or vertical segments can be specified as fill elements, but not angled segments. NOTE: The rounded endpoints of the segment are added to the specified length value.

All etch layers: The specified thieving will be re-generated and added for each positive etch layer of the design.

All solder mask layers: The specified thieving will be re-generated and added for each soldermask layer of the design.

Open an Allegro .brd file. Select Manufacture – Thieving then refer to the Options Panel. Select ‘Thieving Outline’ = ‘Rectangle’; the legacy method has been ‘Shape’ requiring additional mouse picks for a basic rectangular pattern. Add thieving to a small area of the design of your choice:

Add additional thieving using the ‘Rectangle’ option you used in the previous step but adjust the following settings …
a.    ‘Thieving style’ = ‘Line’
b.    ‘Size X’ = ‘10’
c.    ‘Size Y’ = ‘20’

Line drawn thieving:

Add thieving to all layers by making the following adjustments:
a.    ‘Thieving style’ = ‘Circle’
b.    Enable  -  ‘Clip to Route Keepin’
c.    Enable - ‘All etch layers’
d.    Enable - ‘Offset Layers’ to prevent coincident thieving on adjacent layers

Add Thieving to the soldermask layers by making the following adjustments:
a.    Disable ‘All etch layers’
b.    Enable ‘All soldermask layers’

It's probably best to turn off the display of all etch layers then enable the two soldermask layers.

Mask-based thieving:


As always, please share your thoughts!

Jerry “GenPart” Grzenia