What's Good About Allegro PCB Editor Component Alignment? See for Yourself in 16.6!

The Component Alignment feature is available in Placement Edit Application mode. It was introduced in the Allegro PCB Editor 16.3 release and now enhanced in 16.6 to support the following new options:

• Alignment Edge
  • When aligning vertically, select ‘left’ or ‘right’ as the edge to base the alignment on
  • When aligning horizontally, select ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ as the edge to base alignment on
• Spacing Options
  • Use DFA Constraints - Compress components in the selection set to their minimum DFA clearances.
  • Equal Spacing - Algorithm computes space between the first and last component of the selection set then divides by the number of components resulting in an equalized spacing gap between each component. Use the increment/decrement controls to adjust component spacing real time.

Read on for more details…

When you window-select a group of components you can hover over the anchor component and select RMB – Align Components. The Options Panel for Alignment controls include -

• Alignment Direction – Horizontal or Vertical
• Alignment Edge – Bottom, Center, Top or Left, Center, Right
• Spacing – Off, DFA, Equal

 


Here’s an example showing ‘Alignment Edge’ to ‘Top’. The alignment is based on the place-bound shapes of each symbol:

 

Here’s an example showing ‘Use DFA constraints’. This effectively compresses the selection set to the Minimum DFA clearance rule between each of the components:

 


In the following example, we've done a window-select of 3 connectors, then selected RMB – Align Components -

• Select the ‘Equal spacing’ – The computed space between each connector in this example is 123.50 mils.
• Use the ‘+’ option to increment the space (value of your choice)
• Use the ‘-’ to decrement the space

Here's an example showing that in the value field adjacent to the decrement and increment buttons, you can enter specific values (in this example - 25 mils). You can click on the ‘+’ and ‘–’ buttons  to decrement/increment the spacing gap by the specified value you entered:

I look forward to your feedback!

Jerry "GenPart" Grzenia