Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: PCB vs. wirewrap
Message-ID: <8544@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 13 Nov 89 22:26:33 GMT
References: <852@carroll1.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 38

in article <852@carroll1.UUCP>, dnewton@carroll1.UUCP (Dave 'Post No Nicknames' Newton) says:
>>>    Oh, can anyone recommend a cheap auto-routing PCB design package?

>        Well, Tango PC w/ autoroute costs around $1000, so I'm looking for
>    something between $500-$1500.  

Pro-Board for the Amiga is about $450.00 list, but it doesn't have what
I'd consider a real autorouting facility.  What the call "autoroute" I'd
call basically an "auto-stitch".  If you're stitching up a bus or some
relatively regular network, you can go into "autoroute" mode and click
from pad to pad while it does the routing between the pads.  Works OK
for this simple stuff, but it's no good for anything very diagonal or 
long and complicated.  What I call real autoroute is what we get on the
dedicated Calay machines here -- dump it in the autorouter when you 
go home, and next morning it's done, 100% routed.  Pro-Board also only
supports ups to 4 layer boards with no inner-layer traces.  It does
support surface mount parts.  The production-ready output is in Gerber
format, though as I recall you can get dot matrix or HPGL output at
least for preview.  I wrote a review of this one for Amiga Sentry awhile
back.  It's certainly servicable, but it's not up to the Calay or
SciCards level (that's what our PCB layout guys use here at work).  
Pro-Net takes the same netlist format as Calay.

There's also one for the Amiga called PCLO which I haven't looked at yet,
though I just got one recently.  This was apparently the first one for
the Amiga, though I'm not sure if it's still being supported or not (I
know it's author is still quite active in the Amiga community, though
the company seems to have vanished).  I gather they have two versions of
PCLO, so this could be the cheapest layout package around, though I 
doubt there's any form of autorouting.  When I check it out I'll be sure
to mention it if it's something in the "don't miss" category.

> David L. Newton       | uunet!marque!carroll1!dnewton  | The Raging Apostle-- 

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
                    Too much of everything is just enough