Background

Why do I need to change my trace widths?

As you start to learn schematic and PCB design, you will have to learn how to alter your trace widths on boards. There are several different reasons that we have difference trace widths on boards. The specifications of traces for digital signals and power traces will be different. Therefore, we must change the widths of the traces on our boards. For more information about the importance of trace widths, you can read more here.

You will also need to learn how to utilize a trace width calculator for finding the appropriate trace width for your board.

Please note: The PCB design in the tutorial is an example used for the purpose of this demonstration. Do not copy it. Your PCB design should either be your individual subsystem or team design.

Altering global trace widths

Find your part/symbol in the project explorer

1. In this example we will be globally changing the trace width in our board, instead of individually changing each trace one by one. First, make sure that you are in the “general edit” mode.

   This can be done by right clicking on a blank space, expanding the “Application Mode” drop down and selecting “General Edit”

   Figure

2. Once the general edit mode has been selected, right click and expand the “Super Filter” drop down. Then select the “Connect Line” function.

   Figure

3. Once “Connect Line” has been selected we can now make a box around the traces we want to change. In this example we will select the whole board and change the trace width from 40 mills to 15 mills. Remember that 1 mill is 0.001 inches.

   Figure

   As you can see 40 mills is causing errors for some of these components and we will reduce the width.

4. When all the traces are selected, we will now right click on any trace, and select “Change Width”. From here we can enter in the trace width that we want.

   For tutorial purposes, we selected all the traces to change globally. However, you can also change specific traces by holding “Ctrl” on your keyboard and selecting the traces you wish to change. They will highlight the same as the image below.

   Figure

   Figure

5. Now hit enter or okay to input the trace width you want. Once this is done you should now be able to see the trace widths of your design have been altered.

   Figure

6. Finally, turn the super filter back off. You have now successfully changed the trace widths of your board globally.

   Figure

Things to check in case of mistakes

1. Make sure to be in general edit mode before selecting connect line function.

2. Know what your current trace width is, and what you would like to change it to by using the trace width calculator.

3. Be sure to select all the traces you wish to change, and right click on the highlight trace. The “Change Width” function will not pop up if you did not right click on a highlighted trace.