Re: gEDA-user: Manual routing only

[Bob Paddock <bpaddock@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 29 January 2005 09:32 am, Xtian Xultz wrote:

> > "Manual routing only."
> > (http://opencollector.org/collector.php)
> >
> > This is IMHO wrong. PCB has autorouting too.

> I never used auto routing in any EDA software

I think the point is that many people discount PCB because they do not know
it has all of the features that it does.  They Google for 'pcb' find the home 
page, it is the first hit in Google, with the ancient  1.63 version give it a 
try, get frustrated then move on to something else like Eagle, or worse get 
scared off because the page talks about patches, GLIBC etc.    Yes I know it 
says "The Latest PCB stuff on sourceforge" at the top but people don't always 
read that...  Even the pcb.sf.net page might turn off a lot of people because 
it does not mention that PCB works on Windows, via Cygwin.

I am trying to convince my boss to use PCB so I am sensitive to the marketing
of PCB, and how the the first impression of using the program comes across.
It might seem odd to talk of marketing of PCB but the reality is that is what 
is needed to increase the ranks of PCB users.  More users in the long
term result in the contribution of more libraries, new ideas, new people to 
add features etc...

> and some time ago PCB too, and I didnt like the results. I allways manually
> route my boards. Somebody knows somebody that uses auto routing from any
> software to make professional boards?

Yes.

I did a simple board with it last week.  Took all of five seconds to route,
almost took the fun out of doing a layout.  :-)

In a more complex design when I first place parts  I use the autorouter to 
tell me where the routing problems are going to be.     After a couple of 
iterations of autoroute and moving parts around you get a optimum placement.
Then I toss all of the routing, then just do the small critical sections with 
the autorouter, then hand optimize that section, then move on to the next 
section.

When it comes to things like memory buses the autorouter is the only way to 
go.