Altium autorouting outside PCB extents and freezes - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Spektre
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 26, 2013, 06:41:56 pm
content: Hello.I am trying out the Altium autorouter for the first time and having 2 issues.1. It is placing a few traces outside the board outline. How do I prevent this?2. It is frequently locking up. One core of the processor pegs to full load, but no progress is made. To test, I left it run overnight and in 8 hours nothing else had been completed. This is a fairly sparse, simple 2 sided board. Any ideas?Thanks in advnace

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 26, 2013, 10:25:23 pm
content: Depends entirely upon which version you are running.At one point I think the "out of bounds" issues and lockups weer a known issue and got fixed in some version.Maybe it's in the release notes?

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2013, 10:54:20 pm
content: Is your board routing actually possible? (it sounds like it's fine from your description)From what i remember about the autorouter It will keep trying till the end of time to solve the impossible(using more and more ram as it goes)The autorouter is really intended for 3+ layer pcbs but it will work on 2 layer if it's simple enough.It really doesn't like it when there's only a few options to route somewhere.It likes many choices to pick from as that's how the branching code works.Which is why more layers = better autorouter results.

author: Mengano
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 14, 2013, 05:56:58 am
content: The Altium autorouter is probably the worst one in industry. If you logon go onto the official Altium forums, you will see an endless supply of unhappy forum posters, going back several years, complaining about the horrible autorouter. What's really sad is after several years of very vocal complaints, there have been zero improvements to the Altium autorouter. (Gee, where does all that maintenance fees get used for program improvements?)Save yourself some big headaches and just use the Altium autorouter to do BGA breakouts. This is the only thing it is good for.

author: Mengano
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 14, 2013, 06:51:00 am
content: Avoiding autorouting "is soooo 80s"There are times where autorouting is perfectly safe, it depends on the setup. Try routing a 10,000 net board by hand against an industrial strength autorouter. I used to be very anti autorouter until I spent time learning and using for appropriate nets, and its just silly todo such things by hand when a computer can do at a fraction of time.Yes, almost always it's best to route *critical nets* by hand, and if there are 10,000 DC, low speed, non-critical nets, let a good autorouter handle, like SPECCTRA, etc

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2013, 10:33:06 am
content: Quote from: Mengano on July 14, 2013, 06:51:00 amwhich the Altium autorouter is not.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2013, 02:10:37 pm
content: Looks like the board outline has openings in it.Draw the outline on a layer (mechanical). Select all on that layer . Tools define board outline from selection.That is 1Then , create primitives from board outline and inject them in the keepout layer.Now try it. It'll work perfectly fine.You simply have an opening in the keepout