Re: Cheap Schematic Capture

Joel,
Your impression of the OP was obviously greater than mine. I sensed that
he was at best a hobbiest but since he didn't already have a tool, I
surmised that most tools and functions would simply bog him down. Not to say
that he may not be very intelligent, I just know how the average person gets
bogged down learning the nuances of a CAD program and most don't do get it
right when they do get through it.

As for pin/gate swapping, I never use the automatic features because
they don't intelligently apply any details about the routing, just simple
manhattan distance minimizations. Which are usually definitely not routing
optimized and no software can do that that I have seen.

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

"Joel Koltner" <zapwireDASHgroups@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ajktj.15795$fB7.7027@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Brad,

"Brad Velander" <bveland@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:vl7tj.40353$Ly.26140@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Your points are valid but I think it is far exceeding the OP
needs/knowledge. Would you really think that he is going to do even a
quarter of all that?

I expect the O.P. actually would make great use of fast & easy gate/pin
swapping if available in the program he's using, and there's a decent
chance he'd set up at least a few rudimentary net classes ("Power" &
"Signal" are always favorites), but other than that, no, he won't likely
be using many of those high-end features. My post was more just to
provide some of the "bigger picture" for his own edification.

(My experience with gate/pin swapping is that pretty much everyone does it
if the layout program has the knowledge of the various legal swaps -- or
has a feature to try to optimize the rat's nest by automatically
performing these swaps, as Pulsonix and some other programs can -- whereas
if you have to manually tell the layout package "swap pin 2 and 3" or
"swap pins 1, 2, and 3 with 7, 6, and 5" a lot of people won't bother
since it's more effort than just making a slightly "messy" route instead.)

---Joel




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