Who's using autorouters for their designs?
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Posted by Henk Boonsma on October 22, 2004, 10:39 pm
Please log in for more thread options and in what percentage (i.e. what percentage is being routed by the autorouter)? I've had some bad experience using autorouters and hardly use them anymore. OTOH, Electra claims that autorouters do a very decent job with digital circuits and that even though the layout doesn't look as 'artistic' as one done by a human, they are ussually better. When I look at board layouts on most digital products (e.g. motherboards) it seems to me that they've been done manually (i.e. most signal busses are perfectly routed next to each other, something an autorouter won't ussually do). What do you guys think? | |||||||||||||
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Posted by Hal Murray on October 22, 2004, 11:35 pm
Please log in for more thread options What sort of boards are you interested in? For really simple boards, an autorouter is fine since the routing is generally obvious, at least if you put the components in sensible places. For really complicated boards, you don't have enough time to do it all by hand. For some sections, the routing is simple if you get the components placed right. For other sections, you have to check carefully to make sure the autorouter did something sensible, perhaps tweaking the rules and letting it try again. For almost easy boards, I've had reasonable luck with guiding Eagle's autorouter. Run it and see what I don't like. Fix that, usually by moving a component a bit. Sometimes by ripping up a few tangled signals and letting it try again. Sometimes with a bit of manual help, say by pushing a wire or via around. I often clean things up by hand, but I'm not sure that really matters. It just looks "better" to my eye. -- The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses. These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. | |||||||||||||
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Posted by Leon Heller on October 23, 2004, 12:06 am
Please log in for more thread options > I'm wondering how many people are using autorouters for their board
> layouts > and in what percentage (i.e. what percentage is being routed by the > autorouter)? I've had some bad experience using autorouters and hardly use > them anymore. OTOH, Electra claims that autorouters do a very decent job > with digital circuits and that even though the layout doesn't look as > 'artistic' as one done by a human, they are ussually better. > > When I look at board layouts on most digital products (e.g. motherboards) > it > seems to me that they've been done manually (i.e. most signal busses are > perfectly routed next to each other, something an autorouter won't > ussually > do). > > What do you guys think? There are lots of factors involved. Someone I was talking to about this who designs high-spec. boards for many large UK companies told me that they wouldn't accept them if they had been autorouted. Motherboards are made in such vast quantities that the additional costs for manual routing are insignificant. Although I have Electra (supplied with the PCB package I use) I very rarely use it, although it does work better than any other autorouter I've tried. Leon | |||||||||||||
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Posted by Joerg on October 23, 2004, 1:13 am
Please log in for more thread options Hello Henk,
If the design is noise critical such as most analog circuitry or fast digital areas I don't allow auto routing. I don't do layouts myself but sit with the layouter for critical areas. It may be ok to autoroute parts of a circuit but most everything I ever designed had sections where it certainly would not be appropriate. Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com | |||||||||||||
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Posted by JeffM on October 26, 2004, 2:03 pm
Please log in for more thread options >I don't do layouts myself but sit with the layouter for critical areas.
> Joerg or is that layer-outer? 8-) Do you post from more than 1 computer? Sometimes your posts line-break normally and sometimes they run way past the page edge on the Google archive. | |||||||||||||
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>and in what percentage (i.e. what percentage is being routed by the
>autorouter)? ...