How to drive routing automation with human intelligence
The rapid pace of electronics innovation demands PCB design workflows that combine speed with decision quality. For example, routing your layout requires thousands of decisions as you define the physical connectivity of your design. Users require routing automation that truly serves the designer’s intent, not just automates it. When I discuss routing automation with industry veterans, the first thought many have is auto-routing technology from decades past. Siemens believes the most powerful results happen when human intelligence drives automated workflows. Here’s how we make that vision a reality.
Human-guided routing automation: The best of both worlds
Pure routing automation is fast, but automated decisions can sometimes miss critical design intent. Human expertise is precise, but hand routing can be slow and repetitive. With Siemens solutions, you get the best of both: automation that’s continually steered by constraints, strategies, and intuition only a human designer can provide.
See it in action: video walkthrough
In this video, you’ll see how routing constraints are smoothly integrated into the design workflow, ensuring every trace respects your set requirements during auto-routing. The Target Lengths dialogue enables designers to precisely fine-tune nets in line with parameters from the constraint manager, with minimum and maximum lengths automatically enforced for each trace. You can easily adjust tuning schemes for project-specific needs, blending the rapid efficiency of auto-routing with the accuracy of human expertise. The demo also showcases powerful circuit reuse; validated circuitry can be instantly copied, pasted, and dragged onto the board without extra setup, dramatically reducing time spent on duplication and manual updates.
Key benefits
- Intelligent automation: Routing workflows integrate with constraint management so every trace meets engineering targets, reducing the chance of errors.
- Designer control: Adjust tuning in real time for perfect alignment between your requirements and routing results.
- Rapid design reuse: Instantly duplicate and update validated circuitry, streamlining design cycles and maximizing quality and consistency.
Accelerate your routing workflow
By blending powerful routing automation with true human intelligence, Xpedition technology empowers teams to accelerate design while retaining the accuracy and customization that today’s best PCBs demand. With constraint-driven workflows, flexible tuning, and easy reuse, you get results only possible when humans and automation work in harmony.
