Re: gEDA-user: PCB: Rat's nest to best routing... strategies ?

[Ben Jackson <ben@xxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 11:32:12AM -0600, armdeveloper wrote:
> I've generated my layout from gschem.  I imported the netlist in pcb.
> I've dispersed the components and I've generated the ratsnest.
> Everything worked great.  Its a huge nest !

Of course I would recommend installing my smartdisperse plugin, which
will do a slightly better job of dispersing components when a netlist
is available.

Then make your work area significantly larger than your target board.
Dedicate some layer (I use the one that's gray by default) so draw the
board outline with 10mil lines (if you have the board fabbed, they will
probably want this layer anyway).

First you place the components that have fixed locations (connectors,
mounting holes, panel controls) and then you place the other components
to minimize the rats.

What I used to do was to go into the netlist manager and turn off power
and gnd rats during placement, because they obscure more meaningful
(point-to-point) rats and tend to change dramatically as you move
components around.  Lately I am using a custom version of PCB which
identifies unconnected pins that are over/within planes and draws those
as "via rats", which makes it much easier to see what's going on.

-- 
Ben Jackson AD7GD
<ben@xxxxxxx>
http://www.ben.com/


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