Auto-Router Problems

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joedarock
Posts: 5
Joined: 04 Aug 2015, 02:43

Auto-Router Problems

#1 Post by joedarock » 13 Jan 2017, 01:43

I have a 2-sided board 1.5"x 1.5". It consists of about 35 SMD parts (1206's + 1 SOIC-14). I carefully placed the parts in a way that I thought the autorouter would easily route it. I was surprised when the router gave up when only about 20% of the nets were routed. In some cases, connected pads right next to each other didn't get routed and in other cases of pads right next to each other, it produced long, circuitous routes. One look at the result with human eyeballs spotted numerous trivial but unrouted nets. My grids are set to the finest settings and design rules set for 8mil traces/8 mil spacing.

Is this typical performance or is there something I should be looking for as a possible problem?

Joe

Tomg
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Posts: 2028
Joined: 20 Jun 2015, 07:39

Re: Auto-Router Problems

#2 Post by Tomg » 13 Jan 2017, 09:11

1) Make sure the layers to be autorouted are Signal layers. The autorouter does not work on Plane layers: Route --> Layer Setup... --> [Signal/Plane]
2) Make sure the autorouter Layer Priority is set to Orthogonal for each layer to be autorouted: Route --> Autorouter Setup... --> [Settings] --> [X] Use Priority Layer Directions
Tom

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