I continued the cleanup around U4/U5.
What changed
- Pushed the PN7160 block further into the upper-left and kept its clock/support parts tight:
- U4 now around (-31.7, 21.2) mm
- Y2 around (-30.3, 13.0) mm
- C9/C10 around (-34.2, 16.2) mm and (-37.2, 16.2) mm
- C8 around (-32.0, 26.0) mm
- Pushed the STM32 block further to the right:
- U5 now around (33.5, 2.2) mm
- Kept the edge interfaces in place:
- J1/J2 along the bottom area
- J3 on the left side
Result
- The center routing corridor is more open now.
- Component spacing is still comfortable on the card; the board remains low density and all parts still fit easily on the top side.
- The card outline and 2-layer setup remain unchanged.
What did not clear yet
The remaining problems are still the same category:
- overlapping copper around U4 and U5
- many unrouted airwires
So this confirms the blocker is not mainly placement anymore. It’s now mostly:
- footprint/copper geometry around U4/U5, and/or
- unrouted traces in that hotspot region.
Thickness status
Your planned card thickness is still preserved as the manufacturing target:
- intended flex build remains documented as:
- 50 µm PI core
- 18 µm copper/side
- 25 µm coverlay/side
- 0.2 mm local FR4 stiffeners only where needed
- and the final 0.70–0.76 mm laminated card thickness is still the target for fab/lamination, not the live Flux rigid stackup model.
Best next step
The next pass should be routing/copper cleanup, not more placement:
- inspect U4 and U5 footprint copper directly
- route these first through the opened corridor:
I2C_SCL
I2C_SDA
NRST
- crystal nets around Y2/C9/C10
- PN7160 control nets
- then re-run PCB checks
If you want, I can next give you a U4/U5 hotspot routing checklist with the exact nets to route first and what to inspect on each footprint.