Rigid-flex PCBs comprised of rigid and flexible substrates laminated together are inside a variety of small electronic products. Flexible PCBs (flex/rigid-flex) make it possible to create a variety of products that require small form factors and light weight, such as wearable, mobile, military, and medical devices. The Cadence® Allegro® and OrCAD® 17.2-2016 release enables several new capabilities that minimize design iterations and lower overall cost for flex and rigid-flex designs commonly used in automotive, consumer electronics, computing, communications, mobile, and wearable applications.
Multiple zones can be created using the new Cross-Section Editor to represent rigid-flex/rigid PCBs. A physical zone is used to map an area of the design to one of the stack-ups created in the Cross-Section Editor. Zones automatically include associated keepouts and optional constraint regions and rooms. In-design rules coupled with this enhanced definition ensure that the design is correct by construction. An accurate definition of rigid-flex-rigid design can also be passed on to MCAD systems using IDX data exchange, eliminating unnecessary MCAD-ECAD iterations.
The number of conductive and non-conductive layers on flex and rigid-flex designs are increasing as the fabrication industry innovates to meet customer needs. This explosion of different types of materials and associated rules that are imposed on designers is increasing the amount of work PCB designers have to do to leverage the advances in rigid-flex technology.
New in-design inter-layer checks in the Allegro PCB Editor provide the ability to check geometries between two different layers. In typical PCB designs, various masks and surface finishes require verification of proper clearances and coverage. Rigid-flex designs not only have the same mask and surface finish requirements, but also the addition of bend areas, stiffeners, and so on, which require special clearances or overlaps of materials, spacing, and design features. These objects that are represented on different subclasses require verification between these layers, and this capability is now supported using the inter-layer checks capabilities.
The inter-layer checks capability is a new design rule check (DRC) engine designed to check mask layer to mask layer geometry, as well as mask layer to surface metal. It allows checks for:
The release introduces 12 new layers and 19 new surface finishes and allows users to enable checks against these layers using user-defined clearances or user-specified overlaps. Once enabled, the checks provide feedback during the layout process to avoid design-verify-redesign iterations.
Enhanced Contour is a more efficient method to add routing during Add Connect by following an existing connect line or a route keepin. This feature has been improved over the legacy contour feature by removing a continuous dialog popup, introducing a simple canvas-based two-state click use model and enabling shove of existing connect lines. Transitions between the non-contoured and the contoured routing are smoothed for line or arc corners.
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