Re: gEDA-user: Whatever happened to the "puller"?

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I remember a while back DJ posted some really sweet screenshots of his
> "puller" plugin for pcb, which would create nice curved traces from
> straight ones.  Two questions:

FYI it's the "global puller".  PCB has a "simple puller" (the "Y" key)
that does one specific subset of this, see
http://www.delorie.com/pcb/puller/

> What has become of it,

I still have it as a patch to pcb.  Most of the time, the results are
very pretty.  The rest of the time, it looks like a three year old
scribbled on your board with a crayon.  There are some subtle bugs in
the math ;-)

I asked around for a math/CS major to work on it, and got one taker,
but no actual results.

> and (no offense intended) what exactly was the point, other than
> looking cool?

What, looking cool isn't enough? ;-)

> Does it reduce RF pickup/emissions, trace coupling/inductance, or
> some other such effect?  Does it make fabbing via toner transfer
> easier?  Or does it just look really neat?

The original theory (many decades ago, from the software I was
inspired by) was EMI and signal propogation.  It does, however, get
rid of a lot of sharp corners, and un-parallel-ize many of the lines,
so it may have some EMI benefits.  I suspect that "looking cool" is
probably the only real benefit though.

That, and making it REALLY easy to tell if a board was made with pcb :-)

Also, if the traces leading to pins/vias are straight into the pin,
the teardrop plugin produces better results.


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