2 ms·
Related: looking at the main image, there are lots of places where traces routinely deviate to go around a pad, with an extremely low clearance, needlessly so.
by childintime 7y ago
Related: looking at the main image, there are lots of places where traces routinely deviate to go around a pad, with an extremely low clearance, needlessly so. The designer probably took a defensive approach: the traces have been routed to leave as much space as possible to easily allow additional traces in the same gap.
So to me this pcb is a rough draft, an unoptimized initial version. The optimization obviously wasn't worth any time (and I agree with that), but I think an EDA tool worth its price should take such a design and optimize it. Such details really aren't the job of a designer, but still have the potential to significantly improve a layout.
- IndrekR 7y agoOn this board it looks like just a functionality/beauty thing and does not matter much. But depends on the target. While for the pads I agree, spacing can be optimised, then for the densely routed areas space is your friend. At higher frequencies (shallow skin depth) most energy is guided by the trace, but transferred in the space. Traces become bounds of transmission lines along what transverse electromagnetic waves are propagating. This is the reason why dielectric constant and dielectric loss matter a lot at higher frequencies; and why good impedance matching is needed for efficient energy transfer. EMC/EMI/RFI is mostly energy management issue.