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        Fri, 16 Oct 2015 11:45:33 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 20:45:28 +0200
From: "Nicklas Karlsson (nicklas DOT karlsson17 AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: [geda-user] Is someone working on a PCB autoplacer?
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On Fri, 16 Oct 2015 16:47:17 +0200
Stefan Salewski <mail AT ssalewski DOT de> 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.
> 

Even though an exact box is better sometimes I guess the default is good enough for most cases.