On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 12:43:34PM -0500, DJ Delorie wrote: > > Did you use the trace optimizer for that? If so, any feedback about > it?
I tried it, yes. But to be honest, I didn't quite understand what it was supposed to do... What is it trying to optimize for ? Trace length ? Separation ? Towards the end of the project I was afraid to run the optimizer because I didn't know how to control it, I wouldn't mind an optimize routine, but I think I'll like to control which traces it is allowed to optimize. > As for footprints, I've decided that from now on I'm printing the > board on paper and lining up each component with its footprint to make > sure they all fit. That's probably a good idea, at least if you have all components in hand while designing the PCB... I think the other thing we should do is to try to go through and organize the PCB footprint libraries a little better and figure out which footprints are good and which are bad. This was the biggest problem for me and I think many other beginners to get started using the gEDA/PCB combo, there are many footprints available but it's hard to know what footprints are good and suitable for what. I know this is a large task though, and I'm not asking someone to do this work alone. But maybe we could divide the work and create a nice documented footprint library with documentation on which symbols in gschem that should be used and what footprint attribute to use ? -- Daniel Nilsson
