Hybrid auto routing?  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: BiOzZ
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2013, 07:10:03 am
content: Ok so i was taught seance i was 15 not to EVER EVER EVER EVER autoroute ... so i NEVER EVER EVER did ... well ok once to play with it but whateverim about 19 flat hours into working on a 6 layer board and im half doneso my question is are autorouters all really that bad if done right? yeah you can't just use it for HF stuff or really much because you have to move components around for your traces and stuff like that ... autorouters cant do thatmy question is can i do all my HF stuff manually, intelligently layout the PCB, do a few small traces and get the vital power rails down, than let an autorouter do the rest then review the PCB and make some changesi cant do this in my current design as i already did all the digital stuff but im wondering if anyone has done this before and if there are any major problems with doing thisi know in a perfect world we would all make our PCBs manually as i do now and thats thebest practicebut spending a whole working day laying out slow traces and weaving them threw other traces, removing half of them, re routing again, summoning the PCB gods and hoping you can squeeze your trace between those 2 traces and pass your set rules ... yeah you get itthanks again guys!

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2013, 07:14:58 am
content: I did ask similar question while agoDoes PCB Autorouter really utterly useless ?, there are few good replies there.

author: BiOzZ
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2013, 07:21:29 am
content: Quote from: BravoV on September 13, 2013, 07:14:58 amthanks!

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2013, 08:59:16 am
content: If you really want to try it, just let it run overnight. I would never let the computer touch my design, but I usually make precision analog or power electronics, in that parts it is horrible.

author: mamalala
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 13, 2013, 10:35:18 am
content: It depends on the actual autorouter. Some are really simple and can't do much. On the other end of the spectrum are the ones that can even replace components to optimize things.However, the real issue is usually the setup of the autorouter. Just using some default settings will almost always result in rather crappy layouts. Of course, the more the AR can do, the more you have to setup and make rules for. And this is where it really comes to the amount of time spent. If you have simple to medium complexity layouts, you are probably faster to do it by hand than what you need to setup the AR, have it run, check the results, rerun, etc.But with really complex designs, and a really good AR, it can actually save you some time i think. But then, if you work commercially, you also have to offset the price of the AR package against the time required if you would do it manually. If you often have similar designs where you can re-use a lot of rules, it's worth it. If you always have extremely different designs, where you would have to start from scratch with AR setup/rules every time, it can quickly become borderline.Plus, you usually always have to manually recheck the result anyways.Greetings,Chris