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Iain Wilkie
United Kingdom
1018 Posts |
 Posted - 19 Jul 2010 : 13:53:30
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I note that V14 now has "Trace Router" a new router ..... I am a Pro-Router user so I am now wondering what is the real difference between these routers. Pro-Router was an expensive add-on, so to see a new up-beat router makes me wonder what the differencies are.
Also it seems there are new features associated with the new router .... will these be available to Pro-router as well ?
Iain
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tswelectronics
United Kingdom
88 Posts |
Posted - 19 Jul 2010 : 23:11:08
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Hi, Iain.
I dont want to throw your post off topic but I was wondering a few things about the pro router. Did you have good success with it? I must admit I am a bit old fashioned and just prefer to manually route mine but if a router was any good it would save a lot of time for me.
Also, I take it this upgrade is for the Easy Router and so this upgrade does not apply to your router? Do you get upgrades to the router?
It would be interesting to see how well the different routers do on similar boards. Maybe a complex and a simple board.
Hope this doesnt throw off your thread, wasnt intending to.
Trev |
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Joe Black
Error
Vatican City
1 Posts |
Posted - 20 Jul 2010 : 09:29:56
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I've seen on some of the No1 sales blurb that the Trace-Router is a replacement for the Easy-Router. It seems that the ProRouter is still their high end offering.
What new features have you found that aren't in the ProRouter?
Joe
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Iain Wilkie
United Kingdom
1018 Posts |
Posted - 20 Jul 2010 : 09:58:13
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Manual routing is not old-fashioned .... its being professional as far as I am concerned. Although I have Pro-Router it is used very sparingly. As far as I am concerned there is no router as good as the human brain.... you know what you want to acheive in terms of layout but the router doesn't.
When I use it, it tenmds to be right at the very end of a layout where there are a few non-critical tracks that need finished off. 90% of the routing will be done by hand because that is the only way to ensure that tracks are routing in accordance to your own specifications regarding good layout practices.
Having said that ... the router is very good .... well I think it needs to be considering the cost !. Trace Router is a replacement for Easy Router which I believe was not that brilliant, however I never tried it. I could be wrong but I get the impression that Pro-router is an incarnation of Spectra .... hence the cost and performance.
Pro-Router is not upgraded every year like Easy-PC ... In fact I do not think there has been any changes to it since Easy-PC introduced it as a replacement for MultiRouter some years ago.
Iain
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Peter Johnson
United Kingdom
504 Posts |
Posted - 20 Jul 2010 : 11:39:55
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As I've been at arms length from the Trace Router development, I can be reasonably independent. My initial impression is that it does do a significantly better job than Easy-Router. I haven't yet tried it on seriously dense boards (which will be interesting) but first impressions are that it does indeed sit in the middle between the other two.
ProRouter uses a third party routing engine. There have been functionality improvements over time as the interface has been made more capable, and as the original authors have improved their code. The problem with any autorouter is that unless they're really dramatic, most improvements, though real, are not very visible. It's a bit like living with someone. You don't notice them slowly changing until an old acquaintance remarks on it! |
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rbuck
USA
63 Posts |
Posted - 22 Jul 2010 : 22:27:13
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Trev and others,
I purchased the ProRouter a couple of years ago. I was involved in a project that had very dense routing on several boards. To give you and idea, one board is 5 in x 5 in and has about 240 components including some large connectors.
I tried to route the board with Easy-Router. After it had been running approximately 6 hours (on a fast dual core machine) I shut it down. After discussions with my rep I purchased the ProRouter. It took ProRouter a little less than 1 minute to route the board. I was impressed to say the least.
I have continued to use the ProRouter for all but the most trivial boards. Any traces that require special attention such as large power traces or ground areas I place before running the router. The main advantage of the router is it will get all the connections in for you.
Now, for the downsides. The routing is not pretty or always efficient. I usually end up spending a lot of clean up time if the board is reasonably complex. As a human you can look at places where the router jumped from the top to the bottom of the board and say "that was stupid" and fix it. Or it will go up and around a part and back down to get to a pin when it could have gone in from the bottom of the part. As and example, on the complex board mentioned above, I spent approximately 16 hours cleaning up. But, it saved days of manual routing.
The bottom line is I don't see how I could do without the ProRouter. I haven't upgraded from Ver 12.6 to 14 yet but plan to in the next week or so.
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tswelectronics
United Kingdom
88 Posts |
Posted - 22 Jul 2010 : 22:48:10
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That is good to know about the ProRouter's abilities. I just checked the pricing though and that went out the window. It is quite a bit of money to get anything near useful. By this I mean I wouldnt consider buying anything less than 4 layers.
One thing that does confuse me. When they talk about the pricing to buy EasyPC V14 new they say it includes the Trace Router. This does suggest that it gives you the router if you buy the package. But then with the upgrade, etc it is saying that you get an upgrade from Easy Router if you already have Easy Router.
What is the story? I always thought that the upgrade brought it in line with the latest version sold as new.
Trev
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DavidM
United Kingdom
458 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jul 2010 : 10:41:45
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Trev,
The version update is for Easy-PC itself, adding new features etc to the core product. Trace-Router is a replacement for Easy-Router, so anyone who has already got Easy-Router will get the new router FOC. But if you don't have the old router you won't get a new one added for nothing just by buying the v14 update.
However, we have been bundling Easy-Router with Easy-PC for a long time anyway, so the majority of our customers already have the old router and will thus get the new one when they order their v14 update.
Hope that explains it!
David |
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tswelectronics
United Kingdom
88 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jul 2010 : 20:37:50
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That makes better sense. Thanks for clearing that up.
Trev |
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tswelectronics
United Kingdom
88 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jul 2010 : 20:46:15
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Okay, so just to complete the original question before continuing. Any features found with the ProRouter are those implemented by the third party and thus are done independantly from any features of the lesser routing software?
And now to ask something different. I still have a copy of the old multirouter. It used to plug into EasyPC for windows but as my operating system upgraded, it stopped working. I am thinking of maybe trying to get a old os up and running and see if EasyPC V13 will install on it. Would it work on Win98? I dont expect it to really.
But my question is how does the routing enginer of mult-router compare with these new ones?
Trev |
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Iain Wilkie
United Kingdom
1018 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jul 2010 : 22:03:29
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Trev,
I have been there with Multirouter (i use to use that too) but once XP (or maybe 98) came about it would not run properly under that OS. I remember with Peter Johnstons help I just about got it there, but it was obvious that there were problems and then hey-presto along came Pro-Router to fix the problem.
But you are correct ... what with all this Designspark and Track-router ... what are the benefits of the "bought items" as opposed to the "free items" ... I really do think the system is now being de-valued which doesn't look good in my opinion when providing a professional service. I wonder is there is a free version of Altium ????
Iain
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Edited by - Iain Wilkie on 24 Jul 2010 13:32:26 |
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remi
United Kingdom
101 Posts |
Posted - 26 Jul 2010 : 13:18:33
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I agree with Ian
Never use an auto router is the best practice |
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Iain Wilkie
United Kingdom
1018 Posts |
Posted - 26 Jul 2010 : 17:06:01
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Quite so.....
I bought Pro-Router thinking that it was going to be major player in my PCB layout arsenal, and it would be used more on the complex designs.
However this has turned out not to be the case When you start your layout it has to be manual to get best placements and to route critical paths. By the time you have done all that there is little left to route so you tend to just carry on and finish it manually anyway.
I think from a true professional point of view the ONLY way to route a board correctly for proper layout, attention to tracking run detail, SI, power distribution etc etc, is to do it totally manually.
Routers have their place I am sure, but perhaps inadvertantly seem to put pcb layout into the hands of amateurs and some that really don't know what they are doing ... maybe ok for electronic enthusiasts for their own projects, but not for proper professional bits of kit.
Believe it or not, but I did read of one guy that had auto-placed AND auto-routed a board completely and wondered why it wouldn't work and even admitted it looked a mess !
Iain
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Edited by - Iain Wilkie on 26 Jul 2010 18:28:22 |
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tswelectronics
United Kingdom
88 Posts |
Posted - 27 Jul 2010 : 00:08:12
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Hi guys.
Well I am thinking of giving this Trace Router a try. I can upgrade for a reasonable price and it might just help to route some less important tracks and save me a bit of time.
I have not tried it yet but what I want is to be able to have say a two layer board with the bottom layer the ground. I then want to see if I can track a few important tracks and let the router just via everything to the ground plane and route the tracks for me. Is this a practical implementation of Trace Router? How does it handle ground planes?
Trev
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Iain Wilkie
United Kingdom
1018 Posts |
Posted - 27 Jul 2010 : 08:43:46
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Trev,
Don't know about trace-router but with prorouter what you would do is set in the layer types that the bottom layer is minimum tracks. Draw a bottom layer copper fill outline around the board and connect it to your ground plane net (probably 0V) do a pour and then immediately unpour it. This gives the router the information on the griound plane coverage
Also check the highlight unconnected islands box.(DO NOT USE EASYPC POWERPLANE UTILITY)
Then manually layout and try and keep as many traces on the top side. If you do need to trace onto the bottom layer try to make it as short as possible. The idea is you do not want bottom layer tracks to cut huge slots in your ground plane or group together to create large areas where the copper will not flow.
For any ground plane connection draw a stub on the top layer and end it on a via. If you run the router at any point (remember I am not sure about easy or track router here), it will know there is a copper pour area and any ground connections will be made automatically by it adding a stub and a via. Of course it may also try and lay tracks on the bottom where they could cause flow problems... you really need to rationalise all this as you are doing it.
Once you have done that if you do a copper pour the ground plane on the bottom will fill, and the ground connection vias will connect . If you optimise nets or do a design rule check you may find some vias are not connected as the copper cannot flow to them, also any unconnected copper will be highlighted. Simply address these items as you wish. The unconnected islands may not matter to you so you can remove them .... I wouldn't leave any floating copper personally.
Any copper flow not connecting, well you can move things around until you can get the flow of copper at its optimum for your layout. Remember as you are doing all this you can Unpour and Re-pour at will to see the effects.
This all may sound a bit complicated, but its not really once you try it ... I have done dozens of two layer boards like this.
Iain |
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tswelectronics
United Kingdom
88 Posts |
Posted - 27 Jul 2010 : 23:55:36
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Iain, thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply. Hopefully i will make time to demo trace router and follow your advice. it really is great. i think your reply should be made into a seperate sticky. i am sure others would find it useful advice
Trev |
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Topic |
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V14 and Trace Router