Specctra is a commercial PCB

auto-router In electronic design, wire routing, commonly called simply routing, is a step in the design of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and integrated circuits (ICs). It builds on a preceding step, called placement, which determines the location of each ...

originally developed by John F. Cooper and David Chyan of Cooper & Chyan Technology, Inc. (CCT) in 1989. The company and product were taken over by

Cadence Design Systems Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence), headquartered in San Jose, California, is an American multinational corporation, multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. The co ...

in May 1997. Since its integration into Cadence's Allegro PCB Editor, the name of the router is Allegro PCB Router. The latest version is 17.4 - 22.1 (October 20 2022). Specctra routes boards by presenting graphical data using a "shape-based" technology which represents graphical objects not as a set of points-coordinates, but more compact. This increases the efficiency of routing printed circuit boards with a high density of components, provides automatic routing of the same chain of tracks of different widths and more. Specctra uses adaptive algorithms implemented in multiple trace runs. The routing is carried out in three stages: # preview routing # autoroute # additional processing of autoroute results On the first pass, the connection of all conductors is performed, regardless of the presence of conflicts, which consist in crossing the conductors on one layer and breaking the gaps. On each subsequent pass, the auto-router tries to reduce the number of conflicts by breaking and re-building connections (the

ripup-and-retry router In electronic design, wire routing, commonly called simply routing, is a step in the design of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and integrated circuits (ICs). It builds on a preceding step, called placement, which determines the location of eac ...

method) and pushing the conductors by pushing the neighboring ones (the

push-and-shove router In electronic design, wire routing, commonly called simply routing, is a step in the design of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and integrated circuits (ICs). It builds on a preceding step, called placement, which determines the location of eac ...

method). Electromagnetic compatibility can be tested in Specctra through the "SPECCTRAQuest SI Expert" module. The program is compatible with many

design system A Design system is a set of interconnected Design pattern, patterns and shared practices coherently organized. Design systems aid in digital product design and development of products such as applications or websites. They may contain, but are not ...

s for printed circuit boards, thanks to the use of industrial-standard DSN design file format for project description and Do-files to specify routing strategies. The results are returned to the board editor via SES session files as well as RTE files. Protocol command execution is recorded in Did-file, which after editing can be used as new Do-files. The DSN/SES file formats are also supported by a number of other auto-routers including KONEKT ELECTRA, Eremex TopoR, Alfons Wirtz's FreeRouting and RL-based DeepPCB.

List of EDA tools supporting Specctra

* ACCEL PCB *

Cadence Allegro Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence), headquartered in San Jose, California, is an American multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. The company produces software, ...

* Cadnetix * CADVANCE V / α * DK-/DK-Magic * DREAM CAD *

EAGLE Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...

(via BRD_TO_DSN.ULP etc.) *

KiCad KiCad ( ) is a free software suite for electronic design automation (EDA). It facilitates the design and simulation of electronic hardware. It features an integrated environment for schematic capture, PCB layout, manufacturing file viewing, ...

* Mentor BoardStation * MyPCB * OrCAD Layout * PADS Perform / PowerPCB * PLANET * PLASMA *

Protel Advanced PCB Altium Designer (AD) is a PCB and electronic design automation software package for printed circuit boards. It is developed by Australian software company Altium Limited. History Altium Designer was originally launched in 2005 by Alti ...

* Providence * SCS-1 *

TARGET 3001! TARGET 3001! is a CAD computer program for EDA and PCB design, developed by Ing.-Büro Friedrich in Germany. It supports the design of electronic schematics, PCBs, and device front panels. It runs under Windows and is available in English, German ...

* U-Art *

ULTIboard NI Ultiboard or formerly ULTIboard is an electronic Printed Circuit Board Layout program which is part of a suite of circuit design programs, along with NI Multisim. One of its major features is the Real Time Design Rule Check, a feature that wa ...

* Vanguard PCB * WorkBrain *

Zuken CR-3000 is a Japanese multinational corporation, specializing in software and consulting services for end-to-end electrical and electronic engineering. Zuken came into existence as a pioneer in the development of CAD systems in Japan to contribute to ele ...

CR-5000 CR-5000 is Zuken's EDA design suite for electronics systems and printed circuit boards aimed at the enterprise market. It was developed to tackle complex design needs that involve managing the complete development and manufacturing preparation proce ...

Zuken Visula is a Japanese multinational corporation, specializing in software and consulting services for end-to-end electrical and electronic engineering. Zuken came into existence as a pioneer in the development of CAD systems in Japan to contribute to ele ...

Zuken CadStar CADSTAR is a Windows-based electronic design automation (EDA) software tool for designing and creating schematic diagrams and printed circuit boards (PCBs). It provides engineers with a tool for designing simple or complex, multilayer PCBs. CAD ...

References

External links

* http://www.cadence.com/products/pcb/pcb_design/pages/default.aspx Official website * http://www.dsioffe.narod.ru/myspecctra {{CAD software Electronic design automation software

List of EDA tools supporting Specctra

See also

References

Further reading

External links