Evidently I have much better luck with the autorouter than most of you folks do.
I have used it on boards ranging from 2-sided to 8 layer. I admit that there are sometimes things it does which baffle me, but I don't get the design rule violations like was described in the original post. And I almost always get 100% completion. And it's fast! The thing with the autorouter is you must practice with it to get good results. Tweak every parameter you can think of and see what happens. I will typically have to tweak parameters and do trial routes until I get satisfactory results. On an 8-layer PCB I might spend an afternoon trying different things. Then maybe 15-30 min. of manual cleanup after I get the result I like (or hate least). Manually routing of critical nets (clock, analog) MUST be done manually. But after that, I lock the pre-routes, and let the autorouter rip. I did a 2-sided PCB last week that took only 19 seconds to route to 100%. And it was a good result! It was a simple board, but I would have spent 4 or more hours routing it by hand. And 8 layers, fuhgeddabouddit! I run 99SE on a Asus dual-P3 with 512MB RAM, W2K. No crashes! I agree with Joey, a manual meta-router would be great. I have wished for this for a long time. The best artificial intelligence is a real intelligence (your brain). An AI that autoroutes tracks in a predefined path you specify manually would be the biggest productivity booster to routing I can think of. Ironically, it would probably be easier software to write than a really good autorouter. I don't find manual routing relaxing, though. I like to design circuits. For me, PCB routing and writing software are necessary evils. Best regards, Ivan Baggett Bagotronix Inc. website: www.bagotronix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joey Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Protel EDA Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2002 3:07 PM Subject: Re: [PEDA] Does the Autorouter actually work? > I've previously used the autorouter on a 6/6 4 layer board with out many > problems. When using the autorouter I've always had to spend a lot of time > cleaning up the routes. Since that time, I've stopped using the autorouter. > After I saw how much better I can do by hand, with a little more effort than > the cleanup took before, I've been doing all my routing by hand.. > > What I think might be interesting a manual meta-router. So you can > interactively control how buses are routed without dragging each and every > trace. It would also be nice if the push mode could evenly space the tracks > it is pushing. With the speed of todays computers there is certainly a lot > of "autorouting" small portions of the design that can been done > interactively with the designer. The interface would definately take a lot > of revisions and user feedback to get right. Of course if autorouting gets > better and cheaper it would blow any manual meta-router out of the market. > > What I really want is a good autorouter that produces clean routes with good > adherence to signal integrity and other design rules. On the other-hand, > for the 3 or 4 boards I do a year I doubt I can justify the price of such a > thing if it exists. > > Anyhow, I find, in moderation hand routing boards is relaxing and > meditative. > > Joey Nelson ************************************************************************ * Tracking #: B1D38B0B52D346438B70A5CCC0EDB8DC9200CFD4 * ************************************************************************ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/proteledaforum@techservinc.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
