The 16.5 Allegro Package Design (APD) product has been modified to provide a different type of method to control wire bond settings for groups. It is important to note the differences between these new group settings and the wire bond groups that existed prior to 16.5. In these prior releases, a wire bond had to strictly adhere to a wire bond group, whereby the group defined the characteristics of the wire bond. In contrast, no group settings need to be tagged to wire bonds. They are optional and simply a means to quickly assign characteristics to a set of wire bonds without being attached to them. They are more extensible since the designer can define one or more attributes instead of a specific number of wire bond attributes. Also, they can be re-used from design to design.
Read on for more details …
This feature provides an alternative manner for setting up wire bonds in the design. If the designer wishes to use this capability, the recommendation is that they follow this flow:
1. During design initialization, load the file of pre-defined wire bond settings groups.
2. During wire bonding, select the settings group that applies to the fingers being added or modified. If items from multiple settings groups are being modified, do not select a settings group.
3. If new settings groups are added or existing groups modified at the end of the design cycle, export these for use in future designs.
The most common use model here will be to load an existing set of settings groups from a pre-defined XML file. To do this, open the settings groups form and browse to the master definitions file. Alternatively, the designer will enter this form and manually define the settings groups. When finished, they will most likely save this out to disk for later reuse across similar designs.
When performing wire bonding, the designer can select a settings group from the pull-down list of defined groups to apply that group's configuration to the ministatus panel and, thus, any objects currently selected for manipulation.
Menu and Command-Line Access
This feature does not exist as a standalone command. It is available through the Route > Wire bond > Settings (or RMB > Settings if in a wire bond command already) command.
The screenshot below illustrates the user interface for creating, importing, and exporting wire bond setting group definitions. This is available via a new button on the main Route > Wire bond > Settings form (see the second screenshot below):
• Active Group: This is the group that is currently under edit in the "Definition" section lower in the form. Defaults to the first group alphabetically if there are groups defined for the current drawing.
• Add: Press to add a new settings group definition.
• Copy: Press to copy the current settings to create a new group definition based on it (will also require a group name, just like add).
• Delete: Press to remove the active group definition from the database.
• Master Definitions: This pull-down will allow the user to select from any standard group definition files found in their techpath (works the same as the wire profiles master definitions pull-down). Alternatively, the designer can select the "Browse…" entry to browse to any available file on disk, or the Clear option to disassociate with the master definitions file.
• Save…: Save the set of group definitions from this database to an external XML formatted file for reuse in other designs.
• Refresh from Master: Press this button to refresh the definition of the active from the master definitions file. Again, it works similarly to the profile definitions form button of the same name.
• Checkboxes beside fields in the "Definition" area of the form: When one of these checkboxes is checked, that field will be configured when the active group is selected. If unselected, the existing value for this field will be left unchanged when this group is selected.
• Value fields in the "Definition" area of the form: If the checkbox beside a field is enabled, then the value field will be configurable. The selectable / enterable values for the fields are exactly the same as those you would be able to select / enter for the corresponding field of the wire bond add, move, or change characteristics form. For example, the "Bubble" field has options of "Shove All", "Shove Path", and "Shove Off".
Here is a screenshot showing the new button for accessing the pre-defined wire bond group settings:
Finally, when you're in one of the wire bond adding / editing commands, such as changing characteristics, there is a new field in which you can select a pre-defined settings group to configure fields on the form. One illustration of the form is shown below for the Add Wire bond command. Whenever the Add Command is invoked, this field is blank. The designer can select any existing pre-defined group settings in the database. If a group is selected, the attributes of that group are reflected on the other fields on the form. For example - if group "JM_FING_GRP" defines an "Align with Wire" alignment, the current Alignment value with be changed to "Align with Wire":
As always, I look forward to your feeback!
Jerry "GenPart" Grzenia
