Homebrew PCBs

I don't think laziness or lack of time is a good reason to use an
autorouter or 4 layer boards.

You'll spend much more time troubleshooting and stuff if you don't
know your board very well, and even more with those internal layers.

I'd only use 4 layers if it's absolutely nececcary for the design, and
I never use autorouters.

Anyway, each his own, but I could never just autoroute a board on 4
layers and send the ugly mess to production jus to get it done. With a
hobby it's usually the making, not the getting it done, but maybe I'm
just old fashioned.

ST



On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:46 PM, roycepipkins <royce.pipkins@...> wrote:
> Hi Cary,
>
> It's because I am an autorouter junkie. I only have so much hobby-time and I believe that using the autorouter saves me a good deal of time.
>
> So what I'm really after is a free CAD that will autoroute the 4 layers. I don't want to have to chose which trace goes on which layer, I'd obsess about those choices for countless hours on end constantly wondering if there is a better way. The boards I make are not worth that time investment.
>
> With the DipTrace autorouter I just spend an hour or two moving and adding vias to match my assembly process and call it good.
>
> My DipTrace process works very well but I don't get the component density I'd like. Also, even though I use a lot of SMD I don't save as many drill holes as I'd like due to all the extra vias that are used merely to hop over other traces. I'm convinced that a 4 layer board will reduce my via count significantly.
>
> Regards,
> Royce
>
>