Re: gEDA-user: Another autorouter bug

[Harry Eaton <bumpelo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Vanessa Dannenberg wrote:

> I hope I'm not sending too many of these here versus the bug tracker...  This 
> one might be bug tracker material actually, but here goes...
>
> If the board has an 'outline' or 'route' layer, the autorouter should avoid 
> placing 'traces' on this layer.
>
> Normally you'd just turn off layers you don't want to autoroute on, but if you 
> do that with the outline layer, and the board is not rectangular or perhaps 
> doesn't fill all of the space allotted to it, the autorouter may take a few 
> liberties and route outside your desired shape/dimensions.
>
>  
Turning off the layer will stop it from routing on the layer, and will 
otherwise have no other effects.
To do this properly, you should use polygons to fill all of the area 
outside of the router boundry on the 'outline' layer, then copy these 
(copper) polygons onto all of the routing layers - that will effectively 
make them keep-out areas. It's not technically necessary to ever remove 
the external poly fill because that part of the board is chopped off anyway.

Of course all of this is a cumbersome (but effective) way to get what 
you want. I wouldn't call it a bug, but a lack of features - the outline 
is really just a temporary ugly hack rather than a properly implemented 
feature at the moment.

h.