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PCB Layout / Autorouter software

K

kmillar

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi,

I'm looking for some PCB Layout / Autorouter software for PC and/or
Mac.
I've got the 'not for profit' version of Eagle, but in order to 'go
professional' is very expensive, so before committing to that I'd like
to evaluate some alternatives.

What do you suggest?

The basic requirements are:
1. Schematic
2. Board Layout
3. Auto router

I could possibly live without the auto-router if the board designer
was easy enough to use.

Thanks in advance.
 
L

Leon

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi,

I'm looking for some PCB Layout / Autorouter software for PC and/or
Mac.
I've got the 'not for profit' version of Eagle, but in order to 'go
professional' is very expensive, so before committing to that I'd like
to evaluate some alternatives.

What do you suggest?

The basic requirements are:
1. Schematic
2. Board Layout
3. Auto router

I could possibly live without the auto-router if the board designer
was easy enough to use.

Thanks in advance.

EasyPC (http://www.numberone.com) is very good, I used it for 20
years. It's about the same price as Eagle and is much easier to use. I
now use Pulsonix (http.www.pulsonix.com), it's a fully-featured
professional package competing with Alltium, OrCAD and PADS, but is a
lot cheaper.

Leon
 
R

Rich Webb

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi,

I'm looking for some PCB Layout / Autorouter software for PC and/or
Mac.
I've got the 'not for profit' version of Eagle, but in order to 'go
professional' is very expensive, so before committing to that I'd like
to evaluate some alternatives.

What do you suggest?

The basic requirements are:
1. Schematic
2. Board Layout
3. Auto router

I could possibly live without the auto-router if the board designer
was easy enough to use.

Two that come to mind in the FOSS realm, Kicad and gEDA. Kicad has
native Windows, Mac, and Linux versions; gEDA has Mac and Linux.

http://kicad.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.geda.seul.org/
 
O

oopere

Jan 1, 1970
0
kmillar said:
Hi,

I'm looking for some PCB Layout / Autorouter software for PC and/or
Mac.
I've got the 'not for profit' version of Eagle, but in order to 'go
professional' is very expensive, so before committing to that I'd like
to evaluate some alternatives.

What do you suggest?

The basic requirements are:
1. Schematic
2. Board Layout
3. Auto router

I could possibly live without the auto-router if the board designer
was easy enough to use.

I hope you can indeed live without the auto-router. From my experience,
there is no real auto-router out there. I route my boards manually using
Protel-DXP.

Pere
 
L

Leon

Jan 1, 1970
0
Bad auto-routers are worse than none, and most routers are bad. We do
8-layer boards with over 1000 parts, including fine-pitch and bga's,
parts on both sides, and we don't auto-route.

John

The Electra autorouter option available with Pulsonix and some other
packages does a pretty good job. I don't use it much, though.

Leon
 
R

Rich Webb

Jan 1, 1970
0
gEDA runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix.

Roger that. I was fooled by the statement: "gEDA is a set of GNU/Linux
or Unix-native programs. There is no supported Windows version."
 
J

John Devereux

Jan 1, 1970
0
Leon said:
The Electra autorouter option available with Pulsonix and some other
packages does a pretty good job. I don't use it much, though.

I agree, Electra was not bad (I say "was" since I am no longer able to
use the activation code due to finally dumping my windows
installation).

I use manual routing generally, but is was nice to use when I had to
route a board with SDRAM+flash+32 bit CPU. I was able to try out
variations on part positions without creating a days work each time I
moved something!
 
J

JeffM

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich said:
Roger that. I was fooled by the statement:
"gEDA is a set of GNU/Linux or Unix-native programs.
There is no supported Windows version."

Stuart (and others) have done a good job
of cleaning up the Wikipedia entry for gEDA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDA#Platforms

The *Windoze* part clears things up nicely
and the OS X part is quite pithy.
 
B

Bob

Jan 1, 1970
0
Not even a little bit of auto-routing?
I use the auto router for ideas and then route it my way.
Kinda like having help from Egor from Frankenstein.
I get the brains but it may not be the right one.

D from BC
myrealaddress(at)comic(dot)com
British Columbia
Canada

I agree. I will take a preliminary placement layout and throw the
autorouter at it. It can quickly show where bottlenecks and
chokepoints are that i might not have noticed. Then I push things
around, rotate parts or change pin assignments and route it myself
manually/interactively.

Bob
 
B

Bob

Jan 1, 1970
0
Heck, routing is the fun part.

John


I think so too. A lot of people don't like it, but I find it relaxing.
I'll put on some instrumental music in my headphones and wander around
the board allowing my left and right brain to play together nicely for
a change.

Bob
 
J

James Arthur

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
We usually pre-plan the placement and fpga pinouts so that things flow
nicely, with minimum crossovers. For critical stuff, like precision
analog or picosecond things, an engineer will do the placement and
connections for one channel or whatever, and give that to our layout
guy as a model. Placement is 70% of the battle. We also give him a
design with FPGA or ram pins unassigned, and let him use the ones that
route best. I think people are still best with mixed-signal or really
high-speed stuff.

I've never tried a really high-end, like $50K, autorouter. They may
make sense in extreme situations, like a sea of digital parts.

Heck, routing is the fun part.

John

I've really enjoyed pin-to-pin one-wire interactive
autorouters, where you tell the computer "run a wire
from here <click> to here <click>."

Since you've placed the parts already--and maybe even boxed
in the path with other traces--they get it pretty close to
right. Then you can tweak it. A big timesaver.

Cheers,
James Arthur
 
B

BW

Jan 1, 1970
0
I've really enjoyed pin-to-pin one-wire interactive
autorouters, where you tell the computer "run a wire
from here <click> to here <click>."

Interactive routers with a dynamic plow functionality are invaluable.
You get the best of both worlds. You just push the trace as you go
along with the mouse and it will reroute all traces within a pretty
large
vicinity to allow you to come through with your new trace. This allows
you to use your brain to figure out the best topology, while letting
the
computer go brute-force to find a way. If the board is choked, you
will
see this easily as the plower will fail.

Routing complex memories and 32-bit CPU busses from BGA's is
something you do in 1-2 hours with such a router. You don't need any
autorouter and you definitely will lose time anyway on it since you
have
to set up the rules very well (this is the hardest part with
autorouting).

/Bjorn
 

Alvin Tsang

Jul 15, 2009
1
Joined
Jul 15, 2009
Messages
1
PCB supply from China

On Dec 5, 7:36 am, D from BC <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:46:28 -0800, John Larkin
>
>
>
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >On Fri, 5 Dec 2008 02:10:36 -0800 (PST), kmillar <[email protected]>
> >wrote:

>
> >>Hi,

>
> >>I'm looking for some PCB Layout / Autorouter software for PC and/or
> >>Mac.
> >>I've got the 'not for profit' version of Eagle, but in order to 'go
> >>professional' is very expensive, so before committing to that I'd like
> >>to evaluate some alternatives.

>
> >>What do you suggest?

>
> >>The basic requirements are:
> >>1. Schematic
> >>2. Board Layout
> >>3. Auto router

>
> >>I could possibly live without the auto-router if the board designer
> >>was easy enough to use.

>
> >>Thanks in advance.

>
> >Bad auto-routers are worse than none, and most routers are bad. We do
> >8-layer boards with over 1000 parts, including fine-pitch and bga's,
> >parts on both sides, and we don't auto-route.

>
> >John

>
Hello everybody,
As a professional PCB supply, we sale good quality PCB with very competitive price,
we can supply 2-8 layer prototype pcb in 7-10 days. and mass board in 3 weeks, about our capability detail. my skype: Alvin-JAC
 
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