{"id":3712,"date":"2026-04-14T09:31:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T07:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/creepage-analysis-for-safer-pcb-design\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T09:31:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T07:31:40","slug":"creepage-analysis-for-safer-pcb-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/creepage-analysis-for-safer-pcb-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Creepage Analysis for Safer PCB Design"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Creepage Analysis: prevent safety issues before they reach production<\/h2>\n<p>Once a PCB design moves above <strong>30 V<\/strong>, creepage is no longer a theoretical compliance item. It becomes a practical safety requirement that can decide whether a design passes validation, meets standards, or gets sent back for rework.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, the check is more complicated than measuring a distance between two nets. Pollution degree, material group, moisture, uncoated drill holes, cutouts, indentations, and the board outline all affect the shortest permissible path. A manual review can handle simple cases, but it quickly becomes inefficient in complex high-voltage layouts.<\/p>\n<h2>Automatic shortest-path calculation for real PCB geometry<\/h2>\n<p>PCB-Investigator\u2019s Creepage Analysis calculates the shortest distance between conductive components and to the board edge. It also includes details such as mount holes and indentations, which are often too time-consuming to evaluate manually.<\/p>\n<p>The analysis is displayed in <strong>3D<\/strong>, making the result much easier to interpret in context. Instead of simplifying the path with right-angle assumptions, the software evaluates the actual geometry, including diagonal paths along edges and holes where this matters most.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The result is not just a number. It is a clear view of how much of the required minimum distance is actually achieved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That percentage-based evaluation makes it easier to identify critical sections immediately. If a path falls below 100%, the risky area is highlighted directly in the analysis result, which speeds up reviews and reduces the chance of overlooking a margin violation.<\/p>\n<h2>Why engineers use it<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Net to Net<\/strong> checks for individual signal or power paths<\/li>\n<li><strong>Net Group to Net Group<\/strong> checks for broader design reviews<\/li>\n<li><strong>Net to Outline<\/strong> checks for PCB edge clearance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This makes the feature useful both during early design iterations and in final safety validation. For high-voltage applications in drive electronics, industrial systems, or power conversion, it helps reduce manual effort while improving confidence in the result.<\/p>\n<p>If creepage is part of your design constraints, take a look at PCB-Investigator\u2019s Creepage Analysis here: https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/features\/developer-tools\/creepage-analysis\/ and explore the manual here: https:\/\/manual.pcb-investigator.com\/pages\/creepage_analysis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Creepage Analysis: prevent safety issues before they reach production Once a PCB design moves above 30 V, creepage is no longer a theoretical compliance item. It becomes a practical safety requirement that can decide whether a design passes validation, meets standards, or gets sent back for rework. In reality, the check is more complicated than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[43,108,55,39,49,17,54],"class_list":["post-3712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-automation","tag-creepage-analysis","tag-developer","tag-pcb-design","tag-pcb-development","tag-physics","tag-ultimate","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcb-investigator.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}