DRC (Design Rule Checker) Revisited Part 1

In 2013, we launched our monthly webinar series focusing on the Design Rule Checker in Altium Designer. This was well received and is one of our most-watched videos. But, we also know since then that Altium has added several features to enhance the DRC capabilities, both in terms of rule creation and the ability to quickly determine a flagged issue.

In Part 1, we will cover the following to demonstrate the capabilities within Altium Designer 19:

• Purpose of design rules
  

• Design rule dialogue box
  

• Preferences related to the design rules
  

• Pattern and detail overlays
  

• Design rule waiving
  

• PCB rules and violations panel
  

• Violation Details dialogue box
  

• Batch/Online DRC options
  

In Part 2, we will cover:

• Classes
  

• Priorities
  

• Query creation using various methods
  

• Regional rules
  

• Special Cases
  

Join us to review what you know and learn something you may have overlooked.

The link below will lead you to the Design Rules Summary table.

Design Rules Summary

Q&A from Webinar

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DRC Revisited Part 2

In 2013, we launched our monthly webinar series focusing on the Design Rule Checker in Altium Designer. This was well received and is one of our most-watched videos. But, we also know since then that Altium has added several features to enhance the DRC capabilities regarding rule creation and the ability to quickly determine a flagged issue. Therefore we felt it was time to create Part 2 to keep it up.

In Part 2, we will cover:

• Classes
  

• Priorities
  

• Query creation using various methods
  

• Regional rules
  

• Special Cases
  

If you missed Part 1, you could watch the recording.

Watch DRC Revisited Part 1

The link below will lead you to the Design Rules Summary table.

Design Rules Summary

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Routing Tools in Altium Designer

Since its introduction in 2002, Altium has continued to add to and improve its flagship product, Altium Designer. Its routing tool is no exception. Altium rarely removes a routing feature, knowing that entrenched habits (a.k.a. muscle memory) play a key role in a user's ability to navigate the tool. For example, the hotkey sequence "P T" is still available even though the routing features were moved from the Place menu (hence the use of the letter 'P' for the start of the hotkey sequence) to the Routing menu.

There are so many little but useful features and shortcuts that someone with years of experience in the tool may have forgotten them or may not have ever known about them.

This webinar will go through the interactive routing tool features in the PCB editor of Altium Designer. This includes the tilde key (~) and the tools available in the properties panel while interactively routing.

Whether new to Altium Designer or well-seasoned, there is always a helpful feature or shortcut to discovering.

You may download a document that contains tilde (~) commands for routing in Altium Designer.

Download Tilde Commands

We provide the Altium project that was used in the webinar. Feel free to download it.

Click to Download

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High-Speed Design Rules in Altium Designer

Buried in the PCB design rule set of Altium is a list of high-speed rules. The rules themselves are relatively straightforward; however, their use related to high-speed design is not necessarily obvious. This month's webinar will explore these rules and discuss the rules' applications as they relate to high-speed design issues. Rules that are not listed under the category of "high-speed design" but are very applicable to high-speed design will also be discussed. We will also review Altium's design rule features to their PCB layout tool during the past year.

We have enclosed a link to our 2014 webinar on Altium's design rule checker for your viewing consideration. Though the dialogues have changed recently, the functionality and capabilities introduced in the video are still available within the tool. This is an excellent video for those trying to get acclimated to Altium's design rule methodology and a good refresher for those who want to take advantage of the many rule features that Altium offers. This video was one of the most requested webinar recordings of 2014, and we are thrilled to release this publicly.

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Mastering the Matching of the Lines - xSignals and Length Tuning

Nine Dot Connects is no stranger to complex high-speed designs with tight timing constraints. While length-matched signals may be aesthetically pleasing, the effort required to obtain the result can be daunting. The concepts include matched single and differential signals, T-branches, daisy-chain (fly-by) routing, and serial terminations. Properly using Length Tuning and xSignals is critical to deal with these issues efficiently.

This webinar will show the functionality of both Length Tuning and xSignals in Altium Designer. Given that we have not covered the creation of differential signals in Altium Designer in prior webinars, a brief primer will be given.

In addition to some tool instruction, Tom Cassidy, our resident expert in DDR3/4 and other high-speed copper configurations, will demonstrate 'real world' uses of both features. Some many tips and tricks that can make the process more efficient.

3 Banks of DDR4s, 3 large FGPAs, and 96 Pairs of 15 Gbps Signals Design
Performed by Nine Dot Connects

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Mechanical Layers - Revisited

In 2017, we conducted a webinar on mechanical layers in Altium Designer. We introduced a mechanical layer set during that webinar, which many of you have used.

Watch the Video

Many innovations have been added to Altium Designer, making it easier to propagate established mechanical sets to new libraries and layouts. We will demonstrate these features in this webinar. Also, we will introduce a revised version of the mechanical layers. For those who are using our existing layer set, have no fear. The new features in Altium make it easy to stick with what you have already established.

The script used in this webinar was not created by Nine Dot Connects. As with any script in Altium Designer, any new version of AD can negatively impact the script's effectiveness. If you are interested in the script, we encourage you to log on to Altium's forum. Threads regarding this script can be found. Here is one thread that contains the script for Altium Designer 21. You need an Altium Live account to view the following posts:

Component Layer-Pair Type in AD18 - Altium Discussion Forums

Additional Information

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When Designs and Designers Need to Be "Flexible"

There have been many webinars focused on rigid-flex design. Many of these webinars come from manufacturers of rigid-flex boards. They explain what is necessary for us to achieve success in manufacturing these boards. We have also seen a few webinars from ECAD software companies showing us their tools' various capabilities.

What is missing? They are rigid-flex considerations from a designer's point of view. Our tools can do it, and our manufacturing can create it, but the real question is - how do we design it? That will be the focus of our upcoming webinar.

We will explore the following rigid-flex design topics:

• Board outline and bending
  

• Design rules about the flex circuit
  

• Component placement on a flex circuit
  

• Copper types on a flex circuit (pours, fill, and vias)
  

• Routing on a flex circuit
  

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Test Points - Before Layout and Way Beyond Manufacturing

Design for Test (DFT) does not occur naturally in design, especially with the advent of BGAs and components so small that one must use tweezers to grasp them, let alone probe them. Yet, the test points are one of the most straightforward items to add to a design for the test in fabrication, assembly, and labs.

In this webinar, we will cover:

• The benefits of test points
  

• Recommended copper structures
  

• The various approaches to using test points within Altium Designer
  

We provided the Altium PCB project used in the video. Feel free to download it.

Click to Download

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Having a devil of a time with Queries?

In our last two webinars about DRC rules, we focused on Altium Designer's features to create queries for creating rules and selecting primitives within the layout. As seen in our last webinar, one can use several tools to compose a query.

However, knowing a handful of queries can create rules or make searching for features easier. This webinar will explore some more practical queries and help understand the syntax.

If you missed the 2 part "DRC Revisited" series, you could watch the recording.

Watch Part 1

Watch Part 2

We provide a list of queries and the Altium project used in the webinar. Feel free to download it.

Click to Download

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To Route or Auto Route

We put this webinar together to address the complex issue of autorouting. It is a "high-level" presentation to look at the history and algorithms commonly used. As you will see, the effort is not simple. Routing a particular line is one thing; however, planning and prioritizing the routes are challenging. It is much like the old "chicken and egg" conundrum. The router must know the congestion points to prioritize routing; however, it does not know them until it starts to route.

We must also understand that the placement of components and real estate also plays a role in the ease or difficulty of autorouting. These are factors that are controlled outside of the autorouter.

The biggest effort in autorouting is constraining it. There need to rule in place to ensure that the routes are viable. There is a delicate balance. The more we constrain it, the more difficult it gets for the autorouter to complete the route.

More importantly, we must consider the time it takes to the autoroute. It is rare to get the routing correct on the first attempt. This is reviewing the result, modifying the rules or constraints, tweaking the strategy's order, and rerunning it. When the autorouter is done, the work must be reviewed. There will be odd routing formations that are "legal" within the constraints but would be considered poor routing practices if routed manually. Whether one wants to pour over the layout visually and correct issues or hand route each line and review the work as they progress.

In the end, we must decide whether or not to use an autorouter. This question completely depends on the board real estate, the number of components and pins, the clearances allowed, the strategies available, and the number of layers within the board. Though autorouters are used, most boards are still routed by hand. The human mind is still the better "autorouter."

Several EDA companies like Altium have moved away from the all-encompassing autorouter. An all-purpose router becomes a no-purpose router. There are too many scenarios and factors to make this viable. They recently introduced local routers that let the autorouter focus on a specific location. Once the router has completed the task in the space provided, the user can immediately review and clean up before moving.

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How to Tame your Mechanical Layers

Let's face it - mechanical layers are an important 'nuisance' in the design process. Getting everyone to use the layers consistently (or at all) is certainly half the battle; however, organizing the mechanical layers for documentation can be another hassle altogether. All too often, we are constantly turning on and off layers to see what we need to see during the layout process.

It may surprise you that there are ways in most EDA tools to organize all layers so that viewing the different aspects of the design is practically instantaneous. We will demonstrate this concept in Altium Designer. We will also provide valuable collateral at the end of the video to use in your design tools.

We provide the actual Altium Designer project files we use in the webinar and the 6-page Mechanical Layer Configuration Guide.

Click to Download

Q&A's from Webinar

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Altium Designer Design Rule Checker

The Design Rule Checker (DRC) in the PCB layout editor of Altium Design is a powerful tool to help designers constrain their designs to reduce, if not eliminate, errors that may result in manufacturing issues or other undesirable electrical effects (e.g., SI and EMI issues). Many underutilize the DRC checker capabilities because they are not intimately familiar with how to get the most out of it. In this webinar, we will dig deep into the DRC checker's capabilities and show you the tools Altium has provided to allow you to create powerful rules with a minimum of effort quickly.

Topics include:

• Regional rules (for areas that have rules that are different from the rest of the board)
  

• Using the PCB Filter to create rules
  

• Storing favorite queries for reuse
  

• Storing and loading a ruleset
  

• Using Classes to help make rule creation easy
  

• Using the Find Similar Objects to help build rules
  

The link below will lead you to the Design Rules Summary table.

Design Rules Summary

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Is the new Altium Designer Constraint Manager good enough for you?

If you're familiar with Sesame Street, Cookie Monster had a wonderful song with the repeated phrase, "C is for Cookie, and that's good enough for me!." So, when we first looked at the Constraint Manager, childhood memories resurfaced!

This month, we will explore the new Constraint Manager in Altium Designer. In this webinar, we will walk through the editor and demonstrate its features. Furthermore, we will explore the motives behind the creation of this tool.

So, whether the Constraint Manager is good enough for you or you'll get "Oscar the Grouch" about it, come check out the webinar to decide!

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