kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Tomasz Wlostowski <tomasz.wlostowski@xxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

We are planning to introduce some improvements to the P&S router before 
the first lightweight stable release of Kicad comes out. Here's are the 
things we'd like to get done by the end of November:

1) Length tuning tool

An automatic tool generating "accordions"/"meanders" on a chosen trace 
to match the given length. The first version of the tool will simply let 
you choose the pads and the required electrical distance between them. 
We may do the same for diff pairs if time permits.

2) Diff pair router

An extension to the P&S allowing to route both traces of a pair with a 
constrained gap between and adding vias at appropriate spacing. For the 
first version we aim to input the gaps/spacings by hand, later on we 
will probably add such the possibility of adding such constraints on the 
schematic, but this depends on the eeschema schedule.

3) On-line length measurement - display a fly-over window with the 
length/skew of the currently routed trace/diff pair.

4) Some optimizations/improvements/bugfixes
- springback on via dragging
- optimizer improvements (better acute/right angle removal, tighter routing)
- improved layer switching
- optimizations to the P&S storage model
- support for non-orthogonal pads

If there's any particular stuff you'd like to ask for or discuss, don't 
hesitate to tell us!

Most of these changes are internal to the P&S code only and don't affect 
other Kicad components.

I'd also like to add support for arcs on copper layers (for efficient 
representation of miters/meanders). Contrary to the current graphical 
arc object, I'd propose to approximate them using line segments (and 
store as such approximations) so that there's no need to add full arc 
support (for plotter/DRC/etc). What do you think?

Cheers,
Tom