Automation of the design process of printed circuit boards : Determining minimum distance required by auto-routing software

Sammanfattning: This thesis project aims to create an overview of new technologies in printed circuit board manufacturing which when automated could become part of an Industry 4.0 production flow. Potential design limits imposed by new technologies are then applied in the creation process of a minimum distance estimation function. The intended purpose of this function is to correctly estimate the minimum distance required for the auto-routing software FreeRouting to be able to successfully route between two components. This is achieved by using a brute-force attack to progressively decrease the distance between components using a bisectional approach to find the minimum distance at which the auto-routing software can still successfully route for a specific design. Using the results from this brute-force attack a couple of linear functions based on different base designs are created and then used to implement a minimum distance function. The minimum distance estimation function is then intended to be used to implement limits to how close components can be placed to each other in a printed circuit board design tool which purpose is to enable people with lesser knowledge of printed circuit boards to still be able to realize their design ideas.