What's Good About Allegro PCB Editor Parameterized Cornering? Check Out 16.6!

23 Jul 2013 • 1 minute read

The Shape - Add Rectangle command has been enhanced in the 16.6 Allegro PCB Editor release to support cornering options of ‘Chamfer’ and ‘Round’. Control the corner length/radius using either ‘Explicit Length’ values or as a ‘Percentage of the Short Edge’. When adding a rectangular shape, you have the option to interactively draw the rectangle or add parameterized shapes using the new Place Rectangle option.

Read on for more details …

The following steps will introduce you to the parameterized cornering capabilities.

1. Select the ‘Shape – Add Rect icon' or use the menu path Shape – Rectangular:

2. Here you’ll see the new cornering options located in the lower section of the Options Panel:

3. The default settings are consistent with previous behavior for this command.

Draw rectangle
Orthogonal corner option

4. Add a rectangular shape using the following parameters:

   a. ‘Corner’ set to ‘Chamfer’
   b. ‘Explicit Length’ = ‘Trim’
   c. ‘Trim value’ = ‘10’

5. Notes
   a. Chamfer length is computed to be 14.14
   b. Only Chamfer and Round will enable ‘Explicit length; % of short edge:

6. Add a second shape by switching the Explicit Length radio option to Chamfer.
   a. Enter a ‘Chamfer value’ of ‘25’
   b. Note - trim length is computed to be 17.68:

7. Here you can change the creation method to leverage the new parameterized driven model
   a. Change ‘Shape Creation’ to ‘Place Rectangle’
   b. Enter ‘Width and Height’ values of ‘100, 100’
   c. ‘Corners’ = ‘Round’
   d. Maintain ‘Chamfer Length’ of ‘25’
   e. Interactively place 4 or 5 shapes noting the sequential behavior of the application:

8. Additional example shapes experimenting with the ‘% of Short Edge’ length option.
   a. The following shapes were added with parameters of 50 and 100:

Please share your experience using these new features.

Jerry “GenPart” Grzenia