The Sinclair QL Forum

Yes I could sit there for hours hand routing it but why waste hours when an autorouter can do the majority if not all in minutes especially given that a keyboard has no critical tracking requirements. I am still blundering my way through getting Freeroute but in the first video I don't have the orange icon he clicks to get the greyed out option let alone install it and get it to work. I am on Suse and he is on Ubuntu so I am going to turn on my Ubuntu unit that also has Kicad 5 and see if I can copy what the demonstrator has done.

I route all my boards by hand. KiCAD 5 makes manual routing so easy, it's a joy. Only thing I wish it did was makes moving already routed components easier, but I hope that will improve, too. I know from the professionals at work that they do all their stuff by hand, too, so I feel in good company

I can’t imagine a world where autoroute is acceptable.

Dave wrote:I can’t imagine a world where autoroute is acceptable.

I can't imagine a world that after 70 years doesn't have an intelligent autorouter. Oh! wait a minute I am living in one.
Over 30 years ago the PCB layout proffesionals looking at a new system said the autorouter was almost as good as them and they could use it to do the majority of tracks with its rip up and reroute meaning they could make a lot more money. Maybe it will come from Kicad eventually I am just not patient enough and can't afford the £10K or what ever it costs now from the commercial lot.
Having found the import & export Specctra in the file menu I thought I would install the Freerouting Layout editor because it has a DEB file for my Ubuntu and guess what It installed withe two icons but it doesn't start. I need a holiday in the sun but I will just have to settle for a beer.

Your user name is a bad choice - it should be "rantor", not "ruptor"

Ruptor wrote:

Dave wrote:I can’t imagine a world where autoroute is acceptable.

I can't imagine a world that after 70 years doesn't have an intelligent autorouter. Oh! wait a minute I am living in one.
Over 30 years ago the PCB layout proffesionals looking at a new system said the autorouter was almost as good as them and they could use it to do the majority of tracks with its rip up and reroute meaning they could make a lot more money. Maybe it will come from Kicad eventually I am just not patient enough and can't afford the £10K or what ever it costs now from the commercial lot.
Having found the import & export Specctra in the file menu I thought I would install the Freerouting Layout editor because it has a DEB file for my Ubuntu and guess what It installed withe two icons but it doesn't start. I need a holiday in the sun but I will just have to settle for a beer.

Hi,

I download the Layout Editor and install it onto a Ubuntu 20.04 64Bit Linux box.

I exported a Sprectra DSN file from a KiCad Tutorial PCB file and running the "freeRouting.jar" file from Linux desktop as suggested in the first video, I imported into the DSN impoty file and the freeRouting programme read the file, displayed the PCB layout with the unrouted tracks. Selecting the Routing/Autorouting option from the menu, the autorouter, automatically autorouted the PCB.

I exported the Sepectra Session file, with Design Rules and imported the SES file into PCBnew, which updated the PCB tracks all routed.

It did a reasonable job, but not as nice as the manual routed version I did myself.

I do not think you should be sitting in the sun drinking beer... sit in the shade and drink cold beer, with a whiskey chaser.

Derek_Stewart wrote:I download the Layout Editor and install it onto a Ubuntu 20.04 64Bit Linux box.

Did you right click and do software install from the archived downloaded file?
Update: I have done the rudimentary install with apt-get and it says this

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'layout' instead of './layout_20200801_Ubuntu_20.04_amd64.deb'
layout is already the newest version (20200801-20200801).
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 7 not to upgrade.

So it is installed correctly but it does nothing when started.

Hi,

I downloaded the Layout Editor Ubuntu .DEB file and installed that.

May the APT repository is not quite updated correctly.

I usually compile applications from source, which in this the freeRoute application is Java.

I do this and get back to you.

tofro wrote:Your user name is a bad choice - it should be "rantor", not "ruptor"

FYI I was going to use Disruptor because I can disrupt pathogens successfully but decided on Ruptor because I didn't want to Dis myself.
Not sure if your comment is nasty or joke sarcastic, perhaps you should be more explicit. I won't bother posting any of my thoughts, trials or tribulations so what shall I post I ask myself.

Derek_Stewart wrote:I usually compile applications from source, which in this the freeRoute application is Java. I do this and get back to you.

Wait maybe it doesn't have Java but isn't that a dependency?