How do you manage shapes and their parameters for your PCBs??

If designing a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) did not involve changes, we could retain static implementations of creating copper areas and add them near the end of the design process. This of course is not the case in today’s concurrent engineering driven world, where change is more of the normal course of events throughout the entire design process.

In Allegro PCB Editor, changes to areas occupied by copper shapes require the user to either re-add/remove the shape or add changes directly within the shape area while creating a vast amount of DRC conditions. On a multilayer PCB, a simple via hole added though the board could impact several shapes, each requiring some level of intervention. The migration to dynamic-based shapes offers a real-time editing environment where changes made within the shape trigger an immediate shape updating routine otherwise known as auto-voiding. Changes that happen dynamically include:

• Adding/Deleting/Moving a component
• Adding/Slide a cline
• Adding/Sliding a via
• Updating shape parameters, that is, additional clearance
• Modifying the shape’s boundary
• Adding a manual voided area

The Shape menu offers an intuitive use model that allows users to easily create and edit shapes in the same session. Parameter settings can be entered in the Global Dynamic Shape Parameters dialog box.

To avoid time-consuming manual shape instance parameter updates, a new command Shape > Layer Dynamic Params, is introduced. It provides a quick way to define layer-specific shape parameters at the hierarchical level or individual layer level. This functionality should help you move to a top-down approach by pushing parameters down to the individual shapes for a more predictable and consistent shape voiding result.

You can have a quick look at this video snippet on Shape Management.

So, what methods do you use in your regular design cycle while working with shapes?

Would like to hear your comments!

Team PCBTech

Cadence Design Systems