Activity 3: Routing wires on a PCB

In this activity, you route the wires, or the pathways for the circuits on the PCB. There are many ways in which the routes can be done. We will begin by showing how to manually route the PCB followed by using automatic tools.

Steps

1. Optimize the location of the air wires.

   1. Click Design > Pour > Pour Polygons .

      This tool optimizes the route of the air wires, (white lines).

2. Manually create routes.

   1. Click Design > Route > Manual Route .

   2. Click on one of the pins for LED1.

   3. Drag the mouse and watch how a red line shows where a route is created and how the air wire, a white line, guides you to the pin at the end of the route.

   4. Click on the pin of the second component at the end of the white air wire.

   5. Continue to create 3 or 4 additional routes.

      Note:

      You can change the layer between the top and bottom while making a route. When creating a route, press the space bar to get a via. The via will appear attached to your mouse cursor, left click to place the via and continue routing on the bottom layer of the board.. The routes on the bottom side (layer) are blue.

      

3. Automatically route the signal wires.

   1. Click Design > Ripup > Ripup All , to delete the routes you have created manually.

   2. Click Design > Quick Route > Autorouter .

      

      The Top and Bottom layers are the layers used to route the board since the board is a 2 layer board.

   3. Set the Effort to High. This uses more CPU but will be very fast for this design.

   4. Click Continue.

   5. Click Start on the Routing Variants dialog.

   6. Use the arrow keys to scroll through the routing variants.

   7. Pick a route that is optimized to 100%. Typically fewer Vias normally are best.

   

   1. Highlight the route you like best in the list and click OK to pick that route.

Activity 3 summary

In this activity, you routed the wires on the PCB. Initially, you started by manually routing your connections. Then you used an automated process that gave you several options and you picked the one you like best.