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Subject:	Re: [geda-user] Find rat lines
From:	John Doty <jpd AT noqsi DOT com>
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Date:	Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:27:14 -0700
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On Dec 13, 2012, at 7:53 PM, gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu wrote:

> 
> 
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2012, John Doty wrote:
> 
>> Will they find short circuits as and reliably as the simple way? Will users find it easy to understand what's going on? Of course not. They may be useful for more elaborate analysis, but a complicated algorithm used as the basis of a heuristic is not going to be as usable as the simple, rigorous approach. And believe me, simply being able to inspect and adjust the properties and affinities of an object would be a tremendous improvement in the comprehensibility of pcb.
> 
> See the demo code I've written; takes about about 300 lines of C code if I don't delete the debug part, and is a generic solution for fiding the least number of traces you need to break t resolve the short. It is not heuristics but a clean, algorithm theory thing as simple that even I could understand and implement it with exactly 0 background in algorithm theory.

I have no doubt it's a cool algorithm that finds the least number of traces. And, that kind of thing is interesting to know in a variety of circumstances. But but for finding an incidental short, "the least number of traces" is a heuristic. There's no guarantee that those are the correct traces to break.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd AT noqsi DOT com

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