6 Jul
2011
6 Jul
'11
4:03 p.m.
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 8:30 PM, Andrew Lynch <lynchaj at yahoo.com
<http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk> > wrote:
Copied from KiCAD-users mailing list. Hobbyists have
long needed a
free/open source PCB autorouter for their EDA tool suites. One is now in
development. Please support this project. This is not my project but one
I
strongly believe is very good for EDA hobbyists. Certainly useful for
KiCAD
and maybe gEDA as well.
Hi Andrew,
There's this one for gEDA which has been around for several years.
PCB, http://pcb.gpleda.org/news.html
And it's available on sourceforge, http://sourceforge.net/projects/pcb/
And you can track the progress here, https://launchpad.net/pcb/
Why reinvent the wheel ??
They could probably use more coders to support this.
=Dan
-----REPLY-----
Hi Dan,
You've missed the point entirely. Yes, gEDA includes a PCB layout tool (PCB) which
includes an autorouter. However, they are closely coupled and if you want to use the PCB
autorouter you must start with gEDA EDA tool set and stay with it. There is no
import/export capability so if you use KiCAD, FreePCB, EAGLE, etc then you are out of
luck. This is the "lock in" which plagues the whole EDA technology because
there are few if any interchange standards. There is no way to import/export PCBs in/out
of gEDA AFAIK, at least from KiCAD. I can't tell if gEDA supports Specctra
import/export necessary to use FreeRouting.net but doesn't appear so.
QAutorouter is a *much* better approach of decoupling the autorouter from PCB layout tool.
Any EDA tool set that can export Specctra DSN and import Specctra SES files can use
QAutorouter. Also since it has an API which allows multiple different free/open source
autorouters to "plug in" the hobbyists can potentially use MUCS-PCB, Topological
Autorouter, the gEDA PCB autorouter, the KiCAD autorouter (yuck), or new autorouters.
Really the PCB layout tool and the PCB autorouter are so different they *should* be
separate tools. Integration just leads to yet more EDA "lock in".
Personally, I won't even consider gEDA since I have 50+ complete boards in KiCAD
format. KiCAD is not perfect by any stretch but it supports at least some level of EDA
interchange standards (Specctra at least).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_EDA_software
Thanks
Andrew Lynch