Linking 2 PCBs' 64 pin connectors and Length matched lines

[samihawasli]

Hello,


I am working on a project that has experienced some serious mission creep and went from a 1 off research project to me having to design a full 3U chassis. The picture (possibly above) shows a cartoon of what I am trying to do. I've got a back plane which has a number of vertical 64 pin connectors where varying transceiver boards will be plugged in. On the bottom is what I'm calling a Reference clock card. As the name suggests this daughter board will be generating and distributing a reference clock through the system. Phase coherence is quite important, so i need to phase match the reference lines from the Reference card to the various 64 pin connectors in the black plane. The one caveat is, I dont have much real estate on the backplane, so I want to do all my "wiggle wiggle wiggle yeaaaaaah" on the Reference card rather than the backplane. Fun little bonus, those clock lines are differential.

Up till now i've been using pencil and paper (more like excel) to keep track of all my line lengths and pinouts between the various daughter/mother board connections, and making individual PCB rules in 2 different PCB project files. But its starting to get out of hand, fast! There has to be a good method in altium of either linking two project files together, or having 1 project with 2 PCBs. TBH, i'm not really worried about the 64 pin pinouts being link. That pinout is fixed across all boards. But linking the line lengths of reference lines on the backplane and reference card into 1 PCB rule is the ultimate goal. 

Happy to provide more context,
Thanks in advance,
Sami

PS: What did I do wrong with posting the picture?
 

[ajawamnet]

If you update to Pro or have a grandfathered license, you can use Multiboard projects for something like this.  Also - maybe look at using a rigid-flex-rigid design and get rid of the connectors...

Also - I just did a GigE switch like that thing using ribbons...  seems to work.  Flood pinged the system using Pingplotter on all channels simultaneously with zero packet loss... the ribbons and connectors were rated to 6GHz...