PCB Layout / Autorouter software

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.

Reply to
kmillar
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EasyPC

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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

Reply to
Leon

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.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA
Reply to
Rich Webb

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

Reply to
John Larkin

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

Reply to
oopere

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

Leon

Reply to
Leon

gEDA runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix.

Reply to
DJ Delorie

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."

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA
Reply to
Rich Webb

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

Reply to
D from BC

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

Reply to
John Larkin

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!

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John Devereux
Reply to
John Devereux

...but doesn't run on a Mac!

Reply to
Joel Koltner

Rich Webb wrote:

Stuart (and others) have done a good job of cleaning up the Wikipedia entry for gEDA:

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

Reply to
JeffM

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

Reply to
Bob

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

Reply to
Bob

Yup. I can listen to the radio, even newesey stuff, and route traces. I can't write code that way. PCB routing seems to use only a specific part of the brain.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

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

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

Reply to
James Arthur

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

Reply to
BW

I dunno.. I find it disturbing when I close my eyes and I still see the board.. :P

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

Reply to
D from BC

AFAIK an autorouter is the only software I use that behaves the most like artificial intelligence. If I have something acting like a primitive AI, then might as well treat it like a baby. It needs training, monitoring and if it misbehaves, some discipline.

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

Reply to
D from BC

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