Freerouting (www.freerouting.net) project opensourced.

[joseph.anand]

The Freerouting (www.freerouting.net) project has been opensourced under GPLv3. You now have a standalone "push n shove" router for KiCAD and Eagle.

Announcement: http://www.freerouting.net/fen/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=255&start=0%20http://www.freerouting.net/fen/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=255&start=0

Freerouting sources : http://www.freerouting.net/fen/download/file.php?id=145
Freerouting documentation : http://www.freerouting.net/fen/download/file.php?id=146

[DerekG]

The Freerouting (www.freerouting.net) project has been opensourced under GPLv3. You now have a standalone "push n shove" router for KiCAD and Eagle.

Yes, & Freerouting also runs well with DipTrace (in fact it should support any pcb software that supports Specctra/Electra files).

Generally the result with DipTrace is better than the internal DipTrace autorouter ................ but it is not as good as the Altium Designer autorouter

[marshallh]

Its very nice.... But sadly it completely hits a brick wall once your design gets over a certain amount of complexity. I don't mean it gets hard to use, it literally becomes IMPOSSIBLE to use.

I was routing a design with 2 fpgas and some ram chips and near the end I was only getting 1 screen update every 2 seconds. It was almost impossible to finish routing. (I was doing all hand routing btw, autorouter is nice but useless for anything complex)
I think this is completely ludicrous on my 4ghz quad core phenom CPU. One update every 2 seconds.

Witness the Power of Java 

[engidea]

Hello,

I am currently making freerouting stronger and possibly better and I would like to have a reasonably sized board to play with.
Your comment seems to be on spot, the reference i use (see http://www.freerouting.eu and look at the video) it is not probably as sophisticated as yours.

Yes, I know that freerouting is slow, it does not use threading when doig its job, so even if you have 32CPU would not make a difference
and the level of recursion and "work" to do push and shove is astonishing. (I am not arguing if it is good or not)

For me the best part is that I do not need to worry about who is using it, it will simply work.
(You can try it, it is already compiled and ready to run on github) https://github.com/Engidea/FreeRoutingNew.git

Hope you can help, Thanks, Damiano

[timofonic]

Hello,

I am currently making freerouting stronger and possibly better and I would like to have a reasonably sized board to play with.
Your comment seems to be on spot, the reference i use (see http://www.freerouting.eu and look at the video) it is not probably as sophisticated as yours.

Yes, I know that freerouting is slow, it does not use threading when doig its job, so even if you have 32CPU would not make a difference
and the level of recursion and "work" to do push and shove is astonishing. (I am not arguing if it is good or not)

For me the best part is that I do not need to worry about who is using it, it will simply work.
(You can try it, it is already compiled and ready to run on github) https://github.com/Engidea/FreeRoutingNew.git

Hope you can help, Thanks, Damiano

What's the advantage about that FreeRouting fork?

[timofonic]

Hello,

I am currently making freerouting stronger and possibly better and I would like to have a reasonably sized board to play with.
Your comment seems to be on spot, the reference i use (see http://www.freerouting.eu and look at the video) it is not probably as sophisticated as yours.

Yes, I know that freerouting is slow, it does not use threading when doig its job, so even if you have 32CPU would not make a difference
and the level of recursion and "work" to do push and shove is astonishing. (I am not arguing if it is good or not)

For me the best part is that I do not need to worry about who is using it, it will simply work.
(You can try it, it is already compiled and ready to run on github) https://github.com/Engidea/FreeRoutingNew.git

Hope you can help, Thanks, Damiano

What's the advantage about that FreeRouting fork?

Bump!

Any plans? Do you think using Java is sustainable for a project like this?

[engidea]

Hello everybody

Just wanted to say that I am happy on how things are going and remember that there are no banners or tricks on www.freerouting.eu, I am just doing this for the community. (yes, I use it myself for my boards, obviously)

The current version is quite stable, one of the previous main issues with original freerouting.
Java is what allows me to write SW and forget about platform, it works.
Remember that there is a ready to run jar in the deploy directory, no need to "compile" anything.
https://github.com/Engidea/FreeRoutingNew/tree/master/deploy

FreeroutingNew is at the moment the only free tool that can do free angle routing and push-shove in an usable way.
Is it perfect ? no.... but since it does not cost you money....

So, if you like boards in free angle routing, this is the tool for you otherwise you can stay with Kicad and be happy 

Damiano

[nctnico]

Just wondering: what does free angle routing look like? Can you post an image of an example?

[engidea]

See the videos posted at www.freerouting.eu

You can see them with chrome, chromium, vlc and Firefox...

If you think it is useful let other users know, I am not claiming anything from it and you may be helping somebody.

What I wish to do is:
- Refactor to make it more understandable, this is "done" (some of the methods are still way too long...)
- make it stronger/better, possibly faster and this is at a good point
- Have an automatic way to fix clearance violations (in the same way as fixing the initial unconnected)

Then... fix possible bugs 

[PCB.Wiz]

Interesting idea.
I notice the screen shot on the website shows undesirable acute-angle pad entry on larger pads.

[engidea]

The really nice thing about Freerouting and Kicad is that you can do all the routing with freerouting since the PNS is incredibly effective and the free angle makes the optimization of surface use easy (this avoid ripping groundplane)

Then, if you have some "bits" to adjust, do it with Kicad

Easy and quick

[ebastler]

Hi engidea,  in the video on the freerouting.eu site, it looks like one has to move with extreme care when using the push-and-shove router: Move your new trace little by little, verrry slowwwwly, to make sure the router has time to move the neighboring traces out of the way. Otherwise, these traces get torn and messed up, you have to press undo and start over again.

Is that still the current status quo, or have you managed to improve the robustness and responsiveness of the push-and-shove mode?

[engidea]

The situation is better than when I began working on it

At the beginning it was mostly impossible to "pick up" a board multiple times when going back to-from Kicad
Incompletes where growing each time and there where quite a bit "stuck" issues

Now, you can fix incompletes on import and "stuck" should be eliminated

PNS is complicated and especially so in freerouting, given the free angle and how things are arranged.
There is nothing new or special about it, it is quite a lot of recursion going on and the use of lines instead of points to represent traces.

So, yes, you need to be "careful" but not scared when you PNS quite a lot of traces
(use the s key while routing to save the board state for undo, it works)

Bear in mind that you can "space" things and then fix them, so, even a "complex" arrangement should be manageable.

P.S. I posted a new video on tip and tricks at www.freerouting.eu