Eagle Autorouter hate?

[james_s]

You realize you've dredged up a 6 year old thread?

I've never seen anything from an autorouter that I would consider better than marginally acceptable and that's for boards that have all the critical stuff hand router. IMHO autorouters are a waste of time, primarily a trade show gimmick. There is no substitute for hand routing.

[Wilksey]

I think the later versions of EAGLE has a better auto router, and whilst you can get some relatively good results with a decent auto router setup they don't take a lot of design factors into account, clock line routing for example, so I wouldn't use the auto router for anything other than a quick simple board that you can't be bothered to route yourself, BGA chips tend to house some complex blocks, not usually something that pairs well with an auto router, so I would concentrate on the fan-out and see what you can get away with constraint wise from your board house and you might have to go to 6 layers, but you'd be better off routing by hand, try a few ways of running the traces, sometimes it just "clicks".

[flyrod]

Thanks for the comments.

The eagle manual says the autorouter is 100%.  Does this mean it can work as a test for whether it is even possible to route a board?  I agree that the results are pretty messy, but if it can actually route it with 500 vias then I at least know it's possible.  At this point I think the traces are too dense to route in 4 layers.

What is the strategy for hand routing a BGA part?  Try to get all the traces out from under the part radially then worry about connecting them where there's more room?

Again, would someone with new software be willing to open a file and run the autorouter?  To me it is not worth the time, money, and autodesk BS just to try this myself for a hobbyist project.  I see there are some PCB route/design ads on ebay.  Maybe I'll give that a try.

[Wilksey]

It is not 100%

I have EAGLE V7 before they moved to the Autodesk subscription model, and I keep it only because the company paid for the license and it is still useful for opening legacy designs without the newer bloatware of V8+.

Looks like the newer variant is bundled as part of Fusion 360, don't know if you can get a standalone version any more, but they do state a free trial on their site so perhaps you can download and try before committing to buy.

I don't know if it is the same as Altium's subscription where you own the license and just pay subscription costs for new versions or support or if the application will revert to a cut down "free / lite" version after the subscription has ended, but it's £438 (GBP) whatever that is in your currency for a year subscription to Fusion and Eagle by the looks of it, which isn't bad for both programs if that is the case, not sure what edition of Eagle you get if I click on Eagle subscription then it takes me to the Fusion page.
Is there just 1 Eagle option now? 

[1276-2449-1-ND]

I've noticed that IF all the ends of the components end up right on the grid (or a large multiple), then the autorouter routes beautifully. It has problems and starts doing weird stuff the farther parts move off the grid.

The autorouter is great for quickly figuring out part placement, but the manual tools are so easy and useful now (compared to when this thread was started) that it's kinda fun to route a board manually.

[Sylvi]

Hi
I design analog circuits and grounding in these is important, as are power routings. I only use 2-sided boards and mostly through-hole parts. I do not use the ground symbol and usually have an idea of how things need to be placed and connected on the board to satisfy the ground/power flow and trying to keep the signal path as straight as possible. So, I route everything by hand. I consider this to be part of the fun of laying out a board and the auto-router cannot possibly meet my requirements. It can only do the easy traces anyway and you are left with the "toughies".

I use an old version of Eagle 4.16r2 which is what the pro version used to be. I cannot ever go to a subscription - it just irks me when I can and do own the old version. I also have 6.3 and 7.something but do not use them.

Have fun

[mj3452]

EAGLE autorouter seems to make discontinuity to ground fillings by placing vias too close to tracks, so that ground is not filled between via and track, meaning ground current cannot flow.
I think possible solution is to use very large via pads during autorouting and make them actual size (like 0.3mm) afterwards. (Memorising years of use of EAGLE.)