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Re: gEDA-user: Random thoughts on the future interface of PCB



Peter Clifton wrote:

> Some randomly sorted ideas:
> 
> Scrap straight line rats in favour of using the topological auto-router?

I imagine a rubber band mode of manual routing. The user would draw a coarse 
path between obstacles. The pcb engine takes this path and treats it like a 
tensioned rubber band. It may be easiest to do this while the user draws the 
path: Always consider a straight thick line from the current cursor position 
to the end of the current track. If the line touches some obstacle, use the 
touching point as the end of a track segment.


>   (The rat would not jump between layers as an auto-routed trace might

Well, the topo router does not support vias, anyway :-)


>   Sprung loaded / pushed tracking would be updated if the user were to 
>   place and drag an obstacle:

This could/should be possible with all tracks. No need to define a special 
property.


>   | | | | |     ->   | | | | |     ->  | | | | |
>   | | | | |          | | | | |         | | |  \ \
>   | | | | |          | | |.\ |         | | |->.| |
>   | | | | |          | | | / |         | | |  / /
>   | | | | |          | | | | |         | | | | |
 
protel98SE supports this kind of push mode for manual routing. In this case, 
the head of the currently placed track acts as user manipulated obstacle. It 
is very handy when doing tight layouts. IIRC, I suggested it as a potential 
topic for GSoC 2008 :-)


>   I also imagined a stroked gesture where the user draws a ring around 
>   a bunch of tracks, as if to tie a rubber-band around them. This action
>   would group them for operations such as re-routing. 

By the way: pcb could benefit from the notion of permanent (named) groups. 

 
> Magnetic component placement

Do you imagine a dedicated mesh of preferred alignment points? 


> Simulation rendering....

Before dreaming about presenting simulation results in pcb, there needs to 
be an adequate way to do the simulation in the first place. Currently, 
gschem lacks GUI support for simulation. IMHO, this is the road block 
against wide spread use of the simulation engines supported by geda. 

I wish, there was a magic wand to implement these features :-)

---<)kaimartin(>---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak                                  tel: +49-511-762-2895
UniversitÃt Hannover, Inst. fÃr Quantenoptik      fax: +49-511-762-2211	
Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover           http://www.iqo.uni-hannover.de
GPG key:    http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=Knaak+kmk&op=get



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