Bfa Fanout

[davepcb]

I'm a newbie to Orcad Layout and am working on a board with 1mm and 1.27mm bga's. After fighting with the software I finally had to add "free vias in between all of the pads on the bga. I did this by adding one then going to the spreadsheet and typing in the coodinates for the rest. It took forever. Then I had to associate each one with a net. This doesn't feel very efficient.

In PADS all I had to do was make one via breakout and copy paste to all the rest of the pins. It was a snap! Is there any way to do this in Orcad? Should I try to build the breakout into the library part?

much thanks,
Dave

[Jackie Oh!]

Hi Dave,

I just went thru the same thing. As far as I know, there is no easy way of doing it.

What I did was make 2 different footprints for my library. One with the fanout and one without.

In the footprint with the fanout, I made the pins out of copper area and made the vias into the pins. Then I made the trace connection out of free trace. I attached the copper area and free trace to the pin (which is actually the via). At least this way, when I want to move the BGA on the board, the vias will move with it.

I hope this wasn't too confusing.

Jackie Oh!