gEDA-user: Question on PCB auto-router

[Bill Gatliff <bgat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Guys:


Just a hypothetical question, perhaps.

One of the things I learned (quickly) when hand-routing circuit boards 
is to try, as best as possible, to keep directions orthogonal between 
layers.  Component layer traces go left-and-right and solder layer 
goes up-and-down, for example.  There are limits, of course, but this 
strategy definitely helps prevent painting yourself into a corner.

One of the things that annoys me about the x11 pcb autorouter is that 
it goes out of its way TO paint itself into a corner, so to speak. 
Put anything but a couple of headers next to each other and then do an 
auto-route, and it seems to pick layers and directions almost at 
random.  And it loves to run parallel traces on separate layers, 
thereby preventing itself from routing anything else through 
regardless of how much board real-estate is still available.

Or am I missing a configuration tweak somewhere?

Even with a simple board featuring a dozen or so axial-lead resistors, 
three or four DIP packages and some .100 headers, I have to really 
coax the auto-router along--- mostly by selecting a few rats and then 
having it route just those.  If I let it run wild, the autorouter will 
almost inevitably die with one or two traces left and an impossible 
task to hand-route them because of its mistakes.

Anyone else having similar experiences?  As good as pcb is, I can't 
imagine that my feedback is typical but I haven't found a solution or 
improvement yet.  I know that the concept of auto-routing isn't easy 
to implement, but it seems like pcb could do better.  I'm running 
20080202, the version that comes with Debian Lenny.


Regards,


b.g.
-- 
Bill Gatliff
bgat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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