How to Improve Your Routing Techniques

With the routing protocol being one of the most time-consuming board layout tasks, designers need as many tools as possible for today’s complex design requirements. But with board layouts incorporating broad support of component, wifi signal and fabrication technologies in increasingly smaller components enclosure sizes that call for a specific router bit, how can we ever automate this time-consuming process? Read on to get a look into how you can focus on improving your routing techniques.

Improved Design Efficiency

Router software has evolved throughout the years, adding more functionality to make the process less laborious and inefficient. There are three features that illustrate the depth of functionality available to the modern electronics designer:

Dynamic Clearance Boundaries are a useful tool when routing through congested components areas. The clearance boundary feature not only shows the available channels, but also puts a web in the spaces where the printed circuit trace will not fit.

Pin Swapping while routing allows you to swap the pins as part of the router task with the Subnet Swapping function. This can be more effective than swapping pins for route optimization because the order isn’t necessarily the one with no connection crossovers.

Tune Accordions can be added to your PCB router techniques. As you move your cursor through that area, this tool will automatically fill the available area and precisely tune your traces.

Designers need as many tools as possible to meet today’s printed circuit complex design requirements. With routing being a particularly labor-intensive aspect of the design process, these printed circuit tools aim to improve the experience and increase efficiency.

Interested in learning more about how these interactive router tools can help save time on your design process? Download our free PCB Tools Breadth and Depth Part 1 – Interactive Routing whitepaper today.