Dynamic pin assignment during auto-routing process?

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Dave8266
Posts: 49
Joined: 20 Mar 2020, 16:57

Dynamic pin assignment during auto-routing process?

#1 Post by Dave8266 » 20 Mar 2020, 17:15

Hey folks, quick question for those with more experience.

I'm designing an interface board which will take a socketed processor dev board, and provide a layout of 6-8 separate connectors (with some minor support circuitry) for interfacing with outside systems. In this situation, the processor board has tons of spare GPIO pins, and the circuit really doesn't care which pins go to which connectors.

So for example, if the GPIO pins are numbered 1-10, and the connectors J1-6, I really have no concern whether it's GPIO 4, 5, 6, or any other pin that goes to J2, so long as one of them does, and does so exclusively. (I will simply change that function's pin assignment in software to match the resulting board layout.)

Is there any way to represent this kind of design flexibility in the schematic, so that the auto-router can select from the available pin group to make more intelligent dynamic decisions when placing components and traces?

Thanks in advance. :)

Alex
Technical Support
Posts: 3897
Joined: 13 Jun 2010, 23:43

Re: Dynamic pin assignment during auto-routing process?

#2 Post by Alex » 25 Nov 2020, 20:33

The feature you need is pin swap. This function is not available in DipTrace but we plan to add it in future. When we do it, pin swap will work during manual routing but autorouter won't be able to swap pins.

Dave8266
Posts: 49
Joined: 20 Mar 2020, 16:57

Re: Dynamic pin assignment during auto-routing process?

#3 Post by Dave8266 » 17 Dec 2020, 14:17

That sounds great! Looking forward to it, thanks.

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