X-Authentication-Warning:	delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f
X-Recipient:	geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Message-ID:	<1444311925.1005.18.camel@ssalewski.de>
Subject:	Re: [geda-user] GTK3, Glade interface designer (router, auto?)
From:	Stefan Salewski <mail AT ssalewski DOT de>
To:	geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Date:	Thu, 08 Oct 2015 15:45:25 +0200
In-Reply-To:	<mv4l1j$c2c$1@ger.gmane.org>
References:	<20151003210701 DOT de392b925f54dadb0a5fedd8 AT gmail DOT com>
	<1443903758 DOT 1873 DOT 13 DOT camel AT ssalewski DOT de> <56104A0A DOT 9020507 AT xs4all DOT nl>
	<1443909591 DOT 1873 DOT 18 DOT camel AT ssalewski DOT de>
	<CAC4O8c_g7e562Gaotrbi6gLfjP6cJU1ys=MtEkDE7bSh4F9dfg AT mail DOT gmail DOT com>
	<1443975731 DOT 671 DOT 52 DOT camel AT ssalewski DOT de>
	<20151004191717 DOT bf8223417541a9306bfbd9ea AT gmail DOT com>
	<CAC4O8c9Bi5HJfcW6wUgm_+4O2gs4vDdBMbS2hF_0dCqnBuJahQ AT mail DOT gmail DOT com>
	<1443997480 DOT 2068 DOT 32 DOT camel AT ssalewski DOT de>
	<CAC4O8c-bnGky=Nab59-pOTJkB8Q9Tc5t5hqE+dnEF-777hUjMg AT mail DOT gmail DOT com>
	<1444070851 DOT 1014 DOT 20 DOT camel AT ssalewski DOT de> <muv4ua$hat$1 AT ger DOT gmane DOT org>
	<1444157156 DOT 1949 DOT 52 DOT camel AT ssalewski DOT de> <56141CCE DOT 2030301 AT ecosensory DOT com>
	<1444165764 DOT 1949 DOT 78 DOT camel AT ssalewski DOT de> <mv4l1j$c2c$1 AT ger DOT gmane DOT org>
X-Mailer:	Evolution 3.16.5
Mime-Version:	1.0
Reply-To:	geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Errors-To:	nobody AT delorie DOT com
X-Mailing-List:	geda-user AT delorie DOT com
X-Unsubscribes-To:	listserv AT delorie DOT com

On Thu, 2015-10-08 at 04:39 +0200, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote:
> Stefan Salewski wrote:
> 
> > The toporouter as described in in the PhD thesis of Tal Dayan from
> > 1997 assumes that there is an empty area for routing, which is only
> > restricted by the size of pads and pins. So each already existing
> > trace is a problem.
> 
> I suspected so. So this is worse than just a not yet coded feature. 
> Unfortunately, doing some portions in advance manually is key to deal 
> with many special cases. Examples:
> 
> * Make sure, there are proper high current highways
> 
> * Do length compensated thin wires for critical timing
> 
> * Put down these large heat dissipating copper areas
> 
> * Let high voltage lines keep an extra distance to everything else
> 
> * Related: Make sure, no track crosses the boundary of the enclosure
> 
> Most of my boards have at least one of these cases.
> 

Your points are true, but most can be solved. Last both points are
nearly trivial, just give that traces an larger amount of clearance. And
you can protect arbitrary areas from being used by the router by putting
some dummy pad there.

Heat: Put a pad there. With some work we may support arbitrary shapes.

High current traces should be also easy. Length compensation should be
also not a large problem.

More problematic is well defined impedance and matches pairs and
differential signaling. I think a differential trace pair should be
doable by replacing it fist with one trace with double extent, so space
is reserved, and finally replace that one by final two real differential
pairs.

Also you can always partition your boards in distinct areas, routing one
manually. And limited manual fixing is always possible at the end.

But all that needs some thinking of course. Such points generally are
not covered in detail in papers and thesis. Coding that is not much work
in high level languages, what takes some time is thinking and testing.

But it is true, an autorouter can not do all kind of boards well. It is
like coding in C and assembler.

I have yesterday visited the TopoR homepage with the commercial russian
router again. Seems to be very quiet.

- Raw text -