Pin Pair Reconnect Program

The Pin Pair Reconnect program provides a means of performing 'star' or 'mecca' connections on a loaded design.  Generally when PowerPCB receives a netlist from a schematic program such as PowerLogic or Capture,  the pinlisting for each net is either random or numerically sorted.  Few schematic programs or netlisters provide support for pin pair assignments.  So if you have a complex or high-speed net that requires specific routing to avoid trace stubs or connecting a PS sense lines to a specific terminal, you either have to do a manual reconnect and disconnect or resort to some tricky manual routing.  If the design is passed to an autorouter there could be even more loss of control. The Pin Pair Reconnect program solves these problems by automating the entire process. Figure 1 and 2 below illustrate the process.

    Figure 1. Before Pin Pair Reconnect                   Figure 2. After Pin Pair Reconnect

Summary of features and benefits:

• reconnects all pins on net to a selected common pin
• reconnects power nets
• power supply sense line terminations
• routed or unrouted nets
• entire design or individual nets
• net highlighting for easy design rules update

Possible applications:

• power supply sense line terminations
• high-speed net 'stub' or 'dangling route' reduction
• source driver nets
• multidrop data nets
• central ground terminations

A view of the program window and its options is shown in Figure 3. 

Figure 3.  Pin Pair Reconnect program dialog.

Program option details:

Process By:

• Excel Input File -performs batch processing on design by connecting to Excel and reading a netlist spreadsheet
• Selected Source Pin -processes nets on an individual basis by user selection of a common reconnect pin

Input File -generates a formatted net/pinlist in Excel for use by the Process By option. The Excel file can then be edited to select common pins to enable net reconnect.

Update PCB with ECO file -deselect to generate an ECO file only of the reconnect (PCB is not updated) -for manual updates.

Highlight Reconnected Nets -all processed nets (batch or individual) are highlighted at end of processing. This allows a easy method for setting/resetting design rules on the processed nets e.g. turning off Length Minimization to maintain the new reconnects.

Process -executes the reconnect based on selected options

On completion, the program generates a report of all changes and a listing if any netlist errors encountered.

Includes one year maintenance and support.

Program Evaluation

Sorry, due to the low cost of this product, an evaluation version is not available.

Pricing

We are not providing on-line pricing at this time.  Please contact us for pricing or additional infomation.