Ground Nets, Restructured Comprehensions, Single Stackup per Job
This release makes Quilter more explicit about how it interprets your board. New ground net comprehension and a restructured setup flow that surfaces constraints you may otherwise have missed. Single compile target ensures that you get the stackup and constraints you intended.
Ground Net Comprehension
You can now explicitly choose which ground net Quilter uses on your ground layers. Previously, Quilter made a calculated guess at the primary ground. That worked in most cases, but was a fallible assumption on boards with multiple ground domains.
This update also enables region ground pours. If you have a placement region where components share one ground net, Quilter can now establish an independent ground plane for that region. This is directly useful for isolation, high-voltage sections, and sensitive signal domains.
Restructured Setup Flow
The job setup flow has been restructured from two pages into four, with significantly more detail at each step. The new flow explicitly surfaces your stackup layers, power and ground assignments, and fabricator constraints. It also shows which specific constraints Quilter has calculated from your inputs, like what net width will be used to meet IPC2221 heating requirements on each layer for a high power net with a known current.
The goal: reduce the chance that something gets misconfigured silently. Every parameter that affects routing quality is now visible and editable before you submit.
Single Stackup per Job
Until now Quilter has attempted many stackups and design constraints within each job. This can be useful for exploring possible solutions, but most of the time you know what parameters are required. Including the many stackups made it more awkward to define as single one clearly, and this change supports the improvements listed above in Restructured Setup Flow. Now you’ll have better control and clarity of how Quilter will construct your board.
Calculated Impedance Profiles, Clearance Constraints, BGA Fanouts
Three capabilities that materially expand what Quilter can handle. Each is in active development and shipping incrementally.
Constraints from Uploaded Files
The clearance constraints project reads practically everything you can put into a constraint manager in an ECAD tool and respects it: clearances between vias and nets, between particular nets, by layer, in all of the detail you intended. This is the foundation for stronger DRC checks and higher-fidelity output.
Calculated Impedance Profiles
Quilter can calculate impedance profiles for differential pairs and single-ended impedance-controlled signals across all layers of your board, based on your stackup materials. Give Quilter any stackup on any board, and it will route using the trace widths and clearances needed to hit your target impedance.
The calculations are powered by Simbeor by Simberian, the industry-standard solver. If you've used impedance calculations in Altium, you've already used this solver. As long as the material properties in your stackup are correct, the impedance profiles will be correct.
Automated BGA Fanouts
Automated fanout generation for BGAs is intended to ship this spring. Quilter will generate both fanout and breakout for many form factors, including dense connectors. This lets Quilter handle high-density components that previously required manual fan-out before submission.
