Homebrew PCBs

On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 03:19:01 -0000, Dave Mucha <dave_mucha@...> 
wrote:

>
>> But please, also try to route by hand..
>> The autorouters are nice, but all i have seen are simply stupid.
>>
>> Routing is art, you can't let a computer make art.
>> (Or have you ever seen a computer drawing a nice picture?)
>
>
> I never thought of it as art, but the simplicty is that an autorouter 
> will take your miost sensitive input lead and twist it around your AC 
> lines to get it across the board.
>
> Once you autoroute, see what goes where and make sure you AC don't mix up 
> your DC, and your pwm outputs don't cross the super sensitive op-amps 
> lines.
>
> Dave
>
>
Also most Autorouters (the ones i have seen) are not capable of exchanging 
functional equal groups of pins (imagine a 74xx logic gate with 6 equal 
parts).
they are also not capable of placing the parts in a sensible way (the 
autoplacers
i have seen were either unadjusted or simply nonsense...)

come on, Davel, have you never took a pcb, looked at either the component 
side
or the solder side and thought "wow that's beautiful"?

(or maybe looked at one and thought "that's ugly"?)

I find there is a great deal of art in pcb making.

But like with any other art there are no rules to get it perfect.
Some are making good pcbs which are simply the smallest possible.
Some arrange the components nicely, makes the routing a bit more 
complicated
but a pcb where the resistors are not aligned simply looks not so good (for 
me).
If you look at the solder side in my opinion a good pcb is one with each 
track
going the best possibleway, as straight as possible, and properly aligned 
with the other tracks. (On timing sensitive Boards meander are an exclusion 
to "shortest path)


I don't like art very much, i spend no time looking at pictures or 
listening
to music, this simply doesn't interest me... but there is a difference
between a pcb which was made in a hurry with autorouter and a pcb which was 
make
by a skillful person investing some time.

I think it is more art than some things todays "artists" make...
but that's only the opinion of someone who doesn't know much about art..

Hope you can see the art in some of the next pcbs you get hold of.

regards
stefan