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NOVEMBER 2024 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 39 ere are also high-speed design rules that can be set up, along with various fabrication and assembly rules to monitor part placement, silk- screen, solder mask, and paste masks. ese rules are continuously reviewed by an online checking system while you design or they can be batch-checked as desired. With the help of features like the constraint manager, PCB layout designers can rely on their systems instead of remembering multiple rules of thumb. e key, though, is to fully con- figure and put these features to work for you. Leverage the Power of Your Design Tools We've already seen how tools like a con- straint manager can help the designer, but that help is available only if the constraint manager has been set up with the necessary rules and constraints. ankfully, PCB design tools can help you with this as well, as most of these tools provide a mechanism for importing and exporting their design rules. ere are also many other features in the tools that can be automated, such as the setup of the different design parameters used for lay- out. ese and many other parameters can be set up to help you incorporate your PCB layout rules of thumb into your PCB CAD environ- ment, helping you to avoid costly mistakes and errors. DESIGN007 Patrick Davis is the product management director for Allegro at Cadence Design Systems. Listen to his podcast, PCB 3.0: A New Design Methodology, here. This article originally appeared as a blog on the Cadence website and is reprinted here with permission. Figure 2: Setting up the PCB design rules and constraints for differential pairs.