Board routing

With Layout, you can route your board manually, or you can use Layout’s interactive and automatic routing tools (available in Layout Plus and Layout only). Using manual routing, you guide the routing process and manually route each track. Then you optimize routing

using a variety of manual routing commands. In interactive routing, you still control the routing of individual tracks, but can take advantage of Layout’s automatic routing technologies, such as push-and-shove, which moves tracks to make space for the track you are currently routing.

If you choose to use Layout’s autorouter, you can interrupt routing at any time to manage and control the routing process. You can autoroute a single track, a selected area of the board, a group of nets, or the entire board.

Post processing

In Layout, all of your output settings are stored in a spreadsheet that you can call up and revise. You can give layer-by-layer instructions for writing to Gerber files, DXF files, or hardcopy devices. Layout produces more than twenty standard reports, including fabrication drawings, assembly drawings, and pick-and-place reports. In addition, you can create custom reports of your own.

Intertool communication

Layout has the ability to communicate interactively with OrCAD Capture and OrCAD Express using intertool communication (ITC). You can use intertool communication to communicate

updated schematic information to Layout at any stage of the design process. Also, you can back annotate board data to Capture or Express from Layout. Intertool communication supports cross-probing to facilitate design analysis. If you select a signal or part in Capture or Express, the corresponding signal or part is highlighted in Layout, and vice versa.