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Subject:	Re: [geda-user] Is someone working on a PCB autoplacer?
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References:	<1445006837 DOT 2017 DOT 17 DOT camel AT ssalewski DOT de>
From:	"Dan McMahill (dan AT mcmahill DOT net) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
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Date:	Sat, 17 Oct 2015 20:40:37 -0400
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On 10/16/2015 10:47 AM, Stefan Salewski wrote:
> Maybe I missed that, but there was so much traffic on this list in the
> last months that I was able to read only a very small fraction.
>
> An autoplacer has the advantage, that it may be useful also for people
> who wants to do manual routing. And for autorouting it is an important
> component. Another point is, that even a bad autoplacer is useful for
> initial part distribution, so all the arguments people have against
> autorouter are not valid for autoplacers. And development may still be
> some fun. For an autoplacer some support by schematics tool would be
> really useful, for example grouping of elements: An OpAmp with its two
> resistors and two bypass capacitors should build a group, indicating
> that these components belongs together. This is important for the bypass
> capacitors, because their pins both belong to very large nets, gnd and
> power, so location is not determined by net. For signal paths, nets
> should include generally only two or very few pins/pads, so that placer
> can use that information to place components at the correct initial
> position. Another point is, that it would be useful when footprint files
> would contain a bounding box for occupied area -- pads, pins and silk
> may be used for that, but exact box may be better, maybe not only a
> rectangular box, but a polygon or circle.
>


I'm not aware of an open source one.  I think an autoplacer could be 
really nifty.  I doubt I'd leave the instances where the placer puts 
them but like you said to have them come in with at least some basic 
initial grouping would be nice.  At one point I had prototyped something 
that let you launch PCB from within gschem and selections would go from 
one to the other which was pretty useful I thought.  It also was 
intended to help some with placement because you could more easily find 
footprints in layout and know what they corresponded to in schematic. 
But I never really had a chance to finish the code bits to release to 
the world.  It was implemented in a way where you only loaded that 
interface on the fly if you wanted it so it did not interfer in any way 
with folks using pcb without gschem or gschem without pcb.

-Dan

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