PCB Breakout Routing via Escape Outlines and Pseudo-Pins
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Solution Overview
Problem
The complexity of routing traces to pins in printed circuit board designs, especially with high pin density configurations like ball grid arrays, is exacerbated by the difficulty in determining escape trace lengths and distinguishing escape traces from hanger traces, which complicates automatic routing and reduces the effectiveness of netline optimization analysis.
Innovation Solution
The introduction of an escape outline to automatically identify and manage escape traces, allowing for special routing behaviors and improving trace creation, combined with the use of pseudo-pins for netline optimization, which treats breakout endpoints as pseudo-pins to simplify routing and reduce crossing netlines.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If breakouts are used to route traces from pins in high-density configurations, then routing flexibility is improved, but difficulty in determining escape trace lengths and distinguishing escape traces from hanger traces increases
Solution Approach 1:
An escape outline is introduced as an intermediary geometric construct that mediates between the pin array and the escape traces. The escape outline serves as a reference boundary that automatically defines which traces are escape traces (those extending beyond the outline) and provides a basis for determining escape trace lengths, thereby resolving the difficulty of detection and measurement while preserving routing flexibility
2Device complexity
If conventional routing methods are used without escape outlines, then design simplicity is maintained, but automatic routing effectiveness and netline optimization analysis are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The escape outline is established as a preliminary geometric construct before automatic routing begins. This pre-defined boundary enables automatic routing algorithms to efficiently identify escape traces and determine their lengths without complex real-time calculations, thereby improving automatic routing effectiveness while adding minimal complexity to the overall design process
Data Source
AI summary
An escape outline is provided to automatically identify escape traces of a breakout. Further, the escape outline can be used to associate desired properties with the identified escape traces and allows special behavior of the automatic and interactive routing routines that operate on the escapes. Still further, an escape outline may be employed to improve the creation of escape traces by automatic routing tools. The use of pseudo-pins for netline optimization also is provided. Breakouts in a printed circuit board design are analyzed, and their respective endpoints are identified. These endpoints are then employed in a netline optimization analysis instead of the pins from which the breakouts originate. In this manner, the endpoints of the breakout are used as pseudo-pins to substitute for the actual pins of a component. Because the netline optimization will then be predicated upon the breakout endpoints rather that the originating pins, the pin configuration will be revised to simplify routing to the breakouts.