kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 11:06:30PM +0200, Simon Huwyler wrote:
> >I currently use freerouter in p&s mode exclusively, never route in kicad.
> 
> what? Actually, I've always seen freerouter just as an autorouter
> (and I don't like autorouters). I never had the idea to manually
> route with it. Will try this eventually.

Tried freerouter once, got disgusted :D As a P&S router it's actually good
(no idea on autorouting) but the blurry java 2D graphics and the general
slugginess of java itself make it unworkable for me. I prefer using the
pcbnew tracking tools, it doesn't have p&s but it's *way* more snappy in
responding. Also it has no antialiasing and transparency (more visual
contrast => more time before an headache:P)

> I think I have seen that freerouter doesn't know layer constraints,
> but you can tell net classes to be valid on certain layers. I
> personally still think, my way is the better one. :-) But that's not
> the point. Because also in this way, as I said, Kicad's constraint
> handler should be aware of the different layers implement what
> freerouter does.

Probably there are limitations on how rules can be expressed in the
specctra files; no idea on how much 'smart' it can be (independently da
freeroute). Also different routers (still adhering to specctra) have
different capability, I think that would be normal.

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl