Re: gEDA-user: PCB suggestion

[Daniel Nilsson <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 07:10:34PM -0500, harry eaton wrote:
> but nothing beyond 6 layers.  It is rare indeed that more than 8 copper
> layers are required. Usually when 10 and 12 layer boards are made it is
> because the designers are lazy.
> 
> The Pentium processor chip has only 7 wiring layers; it must be of "medium
> to low" complexity!

Harry,

I think this brings up an interesting point, you need to use the right
tool for the job. With that I mean that there are "classes" of tools
for various complexity levels on a design. For the complexity levels
that I think the gEDA tools aim today I agree that more then 12 layers
should be very rare. But I can on the other hand say that at work we
have very few boards (if any) that would be routable on a 12 layer
PCB. I have worked on several designs that required 20 layers to be
routable for example. But that doesn't really matter because we would
not be able to use gEDA/PCB for layout work for so many other reasons
so I consider what we do at work as a different complexity level that
the gEDA tools currently don't aim for. But for my home projects PCB
is a great tool and exactly what I need to do the job, which is a job
of much lower complexity.

When adding features to a toolset I think the main reasons should be
to make sure that you solve the painpoints of the current userbase (so
they don't move to some other tool) and also figure out what other
potential users groups there are what features they would need in
order for them to consider your tool. Is there a group of potential
users what would consider using PCB if it supported more then 8 copper
layers ? If so, adding this support I think is a great idea.

Thanks
-- 
Daniel Nilsson