Re:LibrePCB – Create electronics the easy way
by neltnerb on Thursday September 28, 2023 @07:41PM
(#37697439)
I spent long enough getting tired of routing low impact traces that I actually learned to use the autorouter.
And I mean *learned* because it was not as simple as clicking a button.
Using it right means dropping down keepouts over sensitive areas so that the autorouter knows to stay away -- you know it, but it has no way to. It means placing vias to a ground plane next to every ground pin so that it doesn't try to deal with top layer ground planes breaking. It means telling it how much to penalize a trace for being routed on the power plane layer or the ground plane layer.
It's a super useful tool -- if you are careful with it like you should be with, well, chatgpt. Give it all the information you know it needs to know, patiently and quantitatively, and sure it'll find a reasonably optimal solution. You just have to tune it as well as you tuned yourself.
And I mean *learned* because it was not as simple as clicking a button.
Using it right means dropping down keepouts over sensitive areas so that the autorouter knows to stay away -- you know it, but it has no way to. It means placing vias to a ground plane next to every ground pin so that it doesn't try to deal with top layer ground planes breaking. It means telling it how much to penalize a trace for being routed on the power plane layer or the ground plane layer.
It's a super useful tool -- if you are careful with it like you should be with, well, chatgpt. Give it all the information you know it needs to know, patiently and quantitatively, and sure it'll find a reasonably optimal solution. You just have to tune it as well as you tuned yourself.