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Automatic way to bring related pins "close" together?

TwelveSquared
Senior

Sometimes related pins get automatically mapped in different physical locations on the chip. When possible given alternate pin map choices, I would like related pins near each other for PCB routing purposes. It takes a long time to search all the pins of the chip. Is there a more automatic way to optimize pin placement? If not, would ST consider adding this to CubeMX as a new feature?

2 REPLIES 2
TDK
Guru

You can Ctrl+click on the currently assigned pin to find the alternate locations for it (if any). Usually a pin only has 1-2 alternate pin locations.

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TwelveSquared
Senior

Thank you! That is helpful, though not very discoverable.

Just to throw this out there, I'd like to make a suggestion to improve CubeMX:

When assigning pins, sometimes it is useful to look at the configuration from different perspectives. Although the Ctrl+Click trick helps find another possibility, say, for SPI2 CLK, it is still limited because it doesn't help me see if I should pick a different SPI, say SPI3, to get a better pin layout.

So my suggestion is to add another view, which is a grid, with a row for every possible signal, and a column for every pin, with the possibility to sort rows based on different criteria; for example, sort by type, sort alphabetically, sort by peripheral, etc. In the grid, where a signal can be routed to a pin, the cell on that row and column would be shaded. If the signal IS routed to that pin, it would be highlighted. Now, by switching back and forth between the chip view and the grid view, it will be a much more helpful way to assign pins, in my opinion.

Where / how do I report new feature suggestions to ST?

Thank you again