Extra routing room by suppressing pads

Discussion in 'Cadence' started by brian, Mar 8, 2006.

  1. brian

    brian Guest

    I'm laying out a 16-layer board that calls for unused pads to be
    suppressed on layers 3-14. I'm accomplishing this by using the
    "Internal Layer - optional" checkbox in Padstack Editor and the
    "suppress unconnected pads" checkbox in the Manufacture-Artwork dialog
    in Allegro. What I would like to do is use the extra room given by
    suppressing the unused pads for routing. Is there a way to only show
    the used pads during routing? Ideas of how this could be done (but I
    don't know how to implement any of them) include turning each pad on or
    off by layer (labor intensive), setting all pads "off" until connected
    on a particular layer (or starting with a small pad and then oversize
    the pad if a connection is made) or somehow backannotating from the
    gerber files.

    It seems a big waste to have all that extra room to go unused. Thanks
    in advance for your help. I'm using Allegro version 15.2.

    brian
     
    brian, Mar 8, 2006
    #1
  2. brian

    daytripper Guest

    Unless these are associated with blind or buried vias, you still have to avoid
    the *drill diameter*, plus tolerance (positional plus deflection) anyway.

    And depending on your reference layer clearances/antipad diameter, you'd at
    best be routing lines over voids on the reference planes.

    Hell, son, I *shoot* designers for that! ;-)

    I may be missing something (it's a bit late here, I just flew back from 10
    days in Exuma and I'm still wound up like a top :) but this sounds like a
    low-payback/high-DRC headache looking for a place to happen...

    Cheers
     
    daytripper, Mar 12, 2006
    #2
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