Wiring design support device and wiring design supporting method

A method of supporting designing a wiring path on a printed circuit board, comprising:

• defining, on a target area surface on which the wiring path is generated, a directional graph having a grid point as a node and a line as a branch connecting adjacent grid points;
• acquiring an input about wiring prohibited area information about a position of an area in which an arrangement of wiring is prohibited on the target area surface;
• acquiring an input about wiring information as information about a set of plural sets of grid points connected by respective wiring in the grid points defined on the target area surface;
• generating a flow network by setting a flow capacity to “0” for a branch connected to a grid point placed in an area indicated by the wiring prohibited area information in branches configuring the directional graph, setting a flow capacity to “1” for other branches, and connecting a starting point and an endpoint of a flow through a branch having the flow capacity of “1” to a pair of grid points belonging to each set of the plural sets of grid points;
• searching the flow network for a path of a flow having a maximum amount of flow from the starting point to the end point under the flow capacity for each branch;
• and
• determining the plural wiring paths connecting respective pairs of grid points belonging to respective sets of the plural sets of grid points indicated by the wiring information according to a search result of the path.

A computer-readable non-transitory recording medium storing a program used to direct a computer to support designing a wiring path on a printed circuit board, the program comprising:

• defining, on a target area surface on which the wiring path is generated, a directional graph having a grid point as a node and a line as a branch connecting adjacent grid points;
• acquiring an input about wiring prohibited area information about a position of an area in which an arrangement of wiring is prohibited on the target area surface;
• acquiring an input about wiring information as information about a set of plural sets of grid points connected by respective wiring in the grid points defined on the target area surface;
• generating a flow network by setting a flow capacity to “0” for a branch connected to a grid point placed in an area indicated by the wiring prohibited area information in branches configuring the directional graph, setting a flow capacity to “1” for other branches, and connecting a starting point and an end point of a flow through a branch having the flow capacity of “1” to a pair of grid points belonging to each set of the plural sets of grid points;
• searching the flow network for a path of a flow having a maximum amount of flow from the starting point to the end point under the flow capacity for each branch;
• and
• determining the plural wiring paths connecting respective pairs of grid points belonging to respective sets of the plural sets of grid points indicated by the wiring information according to a search result of the path.