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Allegro PCB Designer Manufacturing OptionPowerful DFM checker, efficient documentation process, and intelligentpanel designCadence Allegro PCB Designer Manufacturing Option is a comprehensive, powerful, easyto-use suite of tools that makes it efficient and cost effective for PCB designers to streamlinethe development of a release-to-manufacturing package for their products. The ManufacturingOption includes three modules: Design for Manufacturing (DFM) Checker, Documentation Editor,and Panel Editor.Finalizing the PCB design data forrelease-to-manufacturing is a criticaland often fragile step within thenew product introduction (NPI)process. The Allegro PCB DesignerManufacturing Option and itsthree key modules—DFM Checker,Documentation Editor, and PanelEditor—assist designers with anefficient and successful handoff tomanufacturing by ensuring that thedesign adheres to all manufacturer’srules, and that the fabricationassembly intent is clearly specified inthe PCB manufacturing documentationpackage.DFM CheckerManufacturing flaws discovered bymanufacturers prior to productionresult in costly time-to-market delaysas designs need to be updated andreprocessed to address these issues.While manufacturers are fully capableof addressing minor issues, theirresolutions are rarely fed back into thesource CAD data, resulting in sameset of iterations of modifications onfuture design revisions. In worst-casescenarios, design intent canunknowingly be sacrificed when themanufacturer alters the source designfiles prior to production.The Manufacturing Option’s DFMChecker module is a powerful, yeteasy-to-use suite of manufacturinganalysis toolsets. It is designedfor engineers and designerswho appreciate the benefits ofmanufacturing analysis and want toconduct it in a robust environment,with ease and sensibility at all phasesof the PCB design process. DFMChecker offers comprehensive analysisfor all major PCB design tools, Gerberfiles, intelligent manufacturing files,and NC data to ensure the contentsupplied to the manufacturer willminimize costly delays.DFM Checker identifies design contentwith the potential to result in lowmanufacturing or assembly yields, orcostly scrap, including: Insufficient spacing between designobjects including pads, tracks,copper, drills, and vias of all typesincluding blind, buried, laser, andback drilled Insufficient annular rings of pad,copper, or mask Insufficient spacing between SMDor through hole pads or parts Copper, mask slivers, and pin holes Acid traps, solder bridge potential,isolated or starved thermal reliefs,and trace antennas Insufficient mask spacing,missing paste, missing soldermask, extra mask areas, or poormask-to-pad ratios Overlapping, coincidental,or redundant drills, mill patherrors, and poor drill-to-boardthickness ratiosDesign AnalyzerDesign Analyzer correlates featureswithin a PCB design—such asminimum trace width/spacing, numberof layers, board size, and drill/viatechnologies—to the requirementsof your preferred PCB fabricator. Thiscorrelation guarantees submitteddesigns will be fabricated withouthidden costs or unexpected delays.Design Analyzer’s design reportscontain all of the information requiredby a PCB fabricator for cost anddelivery estimates of the fabricatedPCB. Working collaboratively with the

Allegro PCB Designer Manufacturing OptionSilkscreen-related analysis includes inkover pads, ink over mask exposures, andother checks. Less-than-minimal partspacing, pad spacing between adjacentparts, and minimal spacing betweencomponent pads and adjacent vias, drills,and copper objects are examples ofcomponent-related analysis.Figure 1. Use of hierarchical rule sets helps identify defects, avoiding costly bareboard scrapreport in hand, PCB fabricators can makerecommendations for design changesthat result in significant cost and timesavings while maintaining design intent.Design Analyzer bridges the gap betweenengineer and PCB fabricator by extractingkey information about the PCB andpresenting it in an easy-to-read format.Hierarchical Rule-Set-Driven AnalysisManage the myriad of checks and theanalysis process by creating rules sets.Checks are organized into layer types andsub-categories to simplify the selectionof checks to perform and the setting ofcorresponding parameters. Define thetype and order of a group of checks (ruleset) to be performed. Analysis can includenetlist or layer comparison, design ruleverification, fabrication, and assemblychecks on the entire design, a specificlayer, or a region of the design. Thisdramatically reduces set up and executionof the analysis. Analysis rule sets can besaved and recalled for use on any design.Rule sets can be defined for a specific PCBtechnology, vendor capability, or uniquedesign requirement.For many designs, different regions orlayers of a PCB have unique constraintsand subsequently require custom analysis.Use unique rule hierarchy to tailor ananalysis to bare board construction, boarddensity, or component technology.www.cadence.comPCB Fabrication AnalysisFabrication analysis will detect specificdesign content that might have anadverse effect on PCB fabrication.Features such as less-than-minimalspacing, acid traps, minimal annular rings,minimum features sizes, and copper andmask slivers are just a few examples ofthe fabrication analysis available. Drillrelated analysis includes minimal distancesbetween drills, pads without drills, millpath errors, coincident or overlappingdrills, and others.Figure 3. Silkscreen-to-solder-mask spacingviolationError ChartingLarge-scale analysis can often resultin a large number of reported failures.Viewing the results of large-scale analysisin chart form allows you to get to theroot of the failure and quickly ascertaina remedy. Charting allows you to reviewspecifics of the failures to identify trendsor unexpected results. DFM Checker’scharting feature reports the exact natureof the error and the PCB features relatedto that error. The charting functiongroups common errors so they can bequickly identified and resolved.Crossprobing with AllegroPCB EditorFigure 2. Acid trap violationPCB Assembly AnalysisAssembly analysis will detect specificPCB content that might have an adverseeffect on PCB assembly. Solder andpaste mask features—such as less-thanminimal mask spacing, missing masks,extra mask, minimal mask annular rings,and mask-size-to-pad-size ratios—areexamples of mask analysis available.The Manufacturing Option’s DFM Checkermodule is tightly integrated with AllegroPCB Editor to walk through errors. Selecterrors within DFM Checker and it zoomsinto the error location within AllegroPCB Editor. This expedites the process offinding and correcting errors in the sourcePCB design. DFM Checker adds DRCmarkers in Allegro Constraint Managerwith details of the violation.2

Allegro PCB Designer Manufacturing Optionnecessary to not only build the producttoday, but also any repeat builds in thefuture—eliminating any guesswork.The Manufacturing Option’sDocumentation Editor module is aPCB documentation-authoring toolthat intelligently automates yourdocumentation creation process toproduce complex PCB documentation ina fraction of the time versus traditionalmethods. Documentation Editor enablesyou to quickly create the manufacturingdrawings that drive PCB fabricationand assembly.Figure 4: Crossprobing between errors andAllegro PCB EditorAllegro PCB EditorAllegro Constraint ManagerFigure 5. Missing solder maskDocumentation EditorUtilizing the Allegro PCB CAD data,Documentation Editor creates intelligentlinked PCB views, drawing details,document notes, drill charts, parts lists,and other crucial documentation details.The result is documentation that moreaccurately articulates instructions forthe successful fabrication, assembly,and inspection of PCBs. The completeddocumentation release package containsall the data necessary to build, view, andarchive the final product.Documentation Editor includes thefollowing key features: Creation and placement of unlimitedviews of the PCB. Each view canhave its own display settings and canbe formatted independently of thesource data. Tight integration with Allegro PCBEditor enables simple click-throughpassing of design data to expedite thedrawing creation process Intelligent automation saves hours, ifnot days, creating PCB drawings forfabrication, assembly, and inspection Automatic creation of componentassembly views, drill pattern view,details, and parts lists derived fromthe Allegro PCB CAD data, eliminatesmanual drawing of tedious documentelements Design changes made in Allegro PCBEditor are automatically propagatedto all effected drawing elements,dramatically reducing time spentupdating documentation due to thedesign changesDrawing CreationStandard or custom drawing elements areeasily added by dragging and droppingfrom a palette of drawing-specificelements, such as sheet borders, titleblocks, PCB views, drill charts, detailviews, text boxes, and note blocks.Elements added to your drawings can beeasily relocated, resized, and customized.Each element can be scaled, formatted,and transformed (rotated, mirrored,flipped, etc.) independent of eachPCB documentation creates themanufacturing specification for anelectronic product. Comprehensivedocumentation records the engineering“intent” of a design specifying theform, fit, and function of the PCB.Documentation drives the procurementprocess, aids manufacturing engineering,and is used in final inspection toverify that the product was built toengineering’s specification. It also getsarchived to ensure later production runscan be repeated with the same level ofconsistent quality. PCB documentationmust capture all of the informationFigure 6. Produce complex PCB documentation in a fraction of the timewww.cadence.com3