Imagine you are designing a complex board with thousands of interconnects and all the usual complexities inherent in a dense design that is also highly constrained. Well, it's easy, the 'imagine' part; and you don't even have to try like John Lennon had crooned in his Imagine song, because most probably you are actually designing one right now that is dominated by bussed interconnect. And most probably your mind is stretched to its limit keeping track of the thousands of connections across several layers and a variety of constraints.
What if I now tell you that you can use PCB Editor to do the following:
- Intelligently plan and autoroute interconnect
- Capture all electrical constraints and designer intent
- Route your design using flow planning to enable a “correct the first time” execution
- Boost performance and productivity significantly
- Reduce cycle time reductions during placement and routing
- Shorten overall design process in contrast to today’s manual planning and routing methods
In one of our earlier blogs discussing rigid-flex PCBs, we had mentioned how flexible PCBs were around for more than half a century but was difficult to implement because tools till now were not supporting an easy implementation. Same is the case with complex interfaces; we were living on with the limitations, struggling and reworking to make do with what we had. No more! You can now use PCB Editor to capture all electrical design intent and designer preference before starting with detailed routing. You can also rest assured that routing will implement the interconnect flow exactly. Of course, you will significantly reduce cycle time during placement and routing because of the automated process.
PCB Editor lets you handle the interconnects graphically by abstracting the interconnect data, making it easier to define and capture your routing intent. And, yes, you don't need to overload your short-term working memory while routing, because the advanced autorouter keeps track of the hierarchies and routing spaces. The autorouter will validate design intent, as you are working, to enable you to make the right decisions. Also, by identifying interconnect issues early in the design, the autorouter makes you aware of issues that might have lingered on forcing you to rework. And the best part? You don't have to go back to the beginning if you recognize an issue, rather you can back up to any of a previous planning stage.
If you are already excited and want to know more about interconnect flow planning and other PCB Editor features that help you increase productivity, click here for a Rapid Adoption Kit with detailed step-by-step procedures on design planning of high-speed designs.
Note: The above link can only be accessed by Cadence customers who have a valid login ID for https://support.cadence.com