Mail Archives: geda-user/2014/01/13/11:59:35
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:48 +0100, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote:
> Stefan Salewski wrote:
>
> > Yesterday I put some new pictures on my page:
> > http://www.ssalewski.de/Router.html.en
>
> Nice!
> And most importantly: Good to see, the project receives serious attention.
> I appreciate your efforts.
Attention is low, as for most FOSS EDA projects. (OK, some exceptions
exists, maybe raspberry pi, LUFA, and for KiCad there is at least some
noise.) But I do not care too much about attention.
>
> Would it be possible to do only some connections? Or is the algorithm a
> case of all-or-nothing?
>
Unfortunately the Router can be not used if there already exist traces
on the layers it should use -- later we may define something like
keep-out areas similar to large pads, but the router will not be able to
interfere with manually drawn traces. That is very similar to Anthony's
router and is a very basic habit of this type of routers.
But of course it is possible to route the first part with the router and
then manually modify the layout and insert the missing traces. Or it may
be able to manually guide the router, i.e. by telling it some via
positions or order of routing.
Current routing strategy is straight forward, with a layer assignment
algorithm as described in Tal Dayan's thesis. That one is good for
preventing crossing of traces, but it takes not into account space
blocked by pads and pins, which is necessary for dense populated boards.
There exists many strategies and ideas to improve net ordering and via
positioning -- all that is not difficult, but needs some thinking and
testing.
Maybe we should have a simple GUI which allows to insert additional
rubber bands and to move vias -- that is very easy to do. As you may
know I have staring a simple schematics editor two years ago
http://www.ssalewski.de/PetEd.html.en
a very simple application. I have just converted it to GTK3 (was easy)
-- now I consider to extend it to basic layout editing. Unfortunately
first I have to do very much cleanup work...
I think you are one of the persons who have really used PCB program in
the last 4 years (I did not, maybe DJ did) -- have you ever noticed the
polygon bug reported some days ago by Gabriel Paubert? There seems to be
no reply from other people, so my impression that no one is using PCB
currently is supported unfortunately. I myself have no idea about
polygon handling and gerber generation, it was my assumption that that
was working correctly. Yesterday I found a problem report related to
polygon dicer from 2008
http://t14292.cad-geda-development.cadtalk.us/yet-another-dicer-bug-t14292.html
And do you have problems with OpenGL?
I had a few times when I inserted layout data into an existing board,
and also some days ago when I tested Gabriels bug. PCB was reacting very
sluggish, even after restart of the program -- and also GLXGEARS was
running very slowly after that. I had to restart my box. I hope this is
only a problem for my box, maybe related to nvidia driver or Gnome
shell. Can be hard to find. Yesterday I tested for 10 minutes without
problems -- when I find a way to enforce that problem, I will compile
PCB without OpenGL support, maybe with Lesstif GUI, and try again.
Best regards,
Stefan
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