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Electronics => PCB/EDA/CAD => KiCad => Topic started by: garvind25 on July 14, 2017, 04:34:32 pm

Title: How to download, install and use free router
Post by: garvind25 on July 14, 2017, 04:34:32 pm

Hi,

  I am new to this forum and KiCAD as well. I wanted to know where from to download, install and use Free router in KiCAD. I am not particularly good with Java, github etc so a step by step instruction would be a very kind gesture.

Thanking You,

Arvind Gupta

Title: Re: How to download, install and use free router
Post by: ElektroQuark on July 14, 2017, 07:16:11 pm

Try THIS (http://www.muonhunter.com/blog/installing-freerouting-on-kicad).

Title: Re: How to download, install and use free router
Post by: julian1 on July 14, 2017, 10:45:50 pm

I set up freeroute on Kicad with the following port, https://github.com/nick-less/freerouting (https://github.com/nick-less/freerouting) It fixes a few GUI bugs, and uses maven to automatically manage the java library dependencies - which I found was an issue with the original port. Compared with the results from Altium router in Dave's video, Freeroute works really well. Getting it setup is a pain, but it went something like this on linux,

# download and install jdk,
# http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u111-b14/jdk-8u111-linux-x64.tar.gz (http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u111-b14/jdk-8u111-linux-x64.tar.gz)

# set up paths
export JAVA_HOME="$HOME/jdk1.8.0_111/"
export PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH"

# install mvn
# http://mirror.intergrid.com.au/apache/maven/maven-3/3.3.9/binaries/apache-maven-3.3.9-bin.tar.gz (http://mirror.intergrid.com.au/apache/maven/maven-3/3.3.9/binaries/apache-maven-3.3.9-bin.tar.gz)

# set paths
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/apache-maven-3.3.9/bin/"

# checkout freeroute git repo
git clone git@github.com:nick-less/freerouting

# build
cd freerouting
mvn clean install

# To integrate with Kicad I think I used generic instructions.

Title: Re: How to download, install and use free router
Post by: garvind25 on July 15, 2017, 06:12:11 am

Thanks for your replies. The mentioned steps are to run free router externally. Is there any way to run it along with KiCAD/ any other free router which can be integrated with Ki CAD? Also, I forgot to mention that I am on windows (Win7 64 bit)

Regards,
Arvind Gupta

Title: Re: How to download, install and use free router
Post by: garvind25 on August 04, 2017, 03:10:00 pm

Hi,

  Do you have the steps to install and use freerouter from Kicad in windows pls?

Thanks in advance,
Arvind Gupta

Title: Re: How to download, install and use free router
Post by: hermit on August 04, 2017, 03:36:20 pm

This came up on the KiCAD forum recently.  You might want to check there.  I hate people that offer 'helpful' suggestions that aren't answering what is asked for, but.....

The manual routing functions with KiCAD make routing pretty painless.  I installed the Free Router, played with it and then forgot about it.  If you layout as you go along and are careful about placement, you will do much better by hand.