Re: What software do you use for PCB with FPGA ?

secureasm@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi Gabor,


I don't know what your budget is, but if you're completely
inexperienced and have the money, you may want to consider
using a design service. =A0We use a local service who consistently
gives us the lowest price on design projects. =A0

I have some experienced with OrCAD, only two layer, manul route
processing never used autoroute.

He uses PADS
software and only autoroutes non-critical nets. =A0I have
the PADS viewer which allows me to check his design output
and run off Gerber files for production. =A0A full seat of
PADS (without autorouting) starts around $5,000.00 but
you can get a free evaluation copy that is limited in
the size of design you can produce, if you want to play
around with it first.

PADs software from Mentor Graphics ?

I have to start a new project with an FPGA, therefore you must use a
multilayer PCB. I was wondering if anyone of you use systems, with
automatic systems routing. I do not even imagine how you can manually
route 600 or more tracks on multilayer PCB.

That is not so difficult as it seems. Drawing the tracks is 20% of the
work involved in making a PCB. The work on the PCB starts before
creating the circuit diagram. You'll need to get an idea on where the
major components and connectors are located (perhaps create a dummy
PCB design with the major components). Think about where sensitive
stuff goes, where the power supply is located, etc, etc. From this you
can make good choices on how to connect pins with a freely
programmable function.

The next step is to get all the footprints 100% right. Make sure you
draw the footprint outline (silkscreen) exactly according to the sizes
mentioned in the data***. There is nothing worse than finding out
two components are too close together (won't fit) because the outline
was drawn wrong. Also include clear markings for pin 1, +, kathode,
etc.

Then you need to find out what clearances, traces width, hole sizes,
anular rings your board manufacturor supports. One of the major
problems here is that some board manufacturors interpret the holes as
the final holes sizes after plating and others interpret them as the
holes sizes before plating. With small vias this does make a big
difference. You'll need to setup your PCB project to have the proper
clearances and hole sizes.

To get to the autorouter part: Most people I know draw traces by hand.
In the early days an autorouter could route a PCB with thru-hole DIP
packages without much problems. I used to do this a lot to save time,
but it took me quite some effort to learn how to use the autorouter.
Nowadays I route by hand.

With SMD the simple autorouters won't work. However, I'm quite sure a
modern autorouter is capable of routing a SMD PCB but I'm also quite
sure it will take a 3 to 5 day course to learn how to configure the
autorouter so it won't produce crap.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
"If it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer!"
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