Free Unlimited Version of AutoTRAX PCB Design Software

[timb]

Really Dave? Really?! This coming from:
A) An Aussie
B) Someone who makes a living out of calling things "shit".

Yes, because this is an open public forum for the community, it is not my personal channel where I can say anything I want.
And that's right, I call "things" shit, not people. I don't mind people using the word shit on this forum if it's warranted, I do it myself. For obvious reasons though I try and maintain this forum to as high a standard as reasonably possible when it comes to civil discourse, and try to set the rules as such.
This means that words like "shit" are not banned, but we don't want someone using it or worse words in thousands of posts and flooding the forum with such talk.

Actually, it's a forum attached to your personal blog, not alt.general.electronics. So you technically can say whatever you want. But, I obviously know what you mean.

Though, as far as I can tell, calling someone a piece of shit in a single post is very different from flooding the forum.

Also, Ilyia was baiting people into personal attacks. You saw what he did with Vincent. It's not like everyone didn't start with civil discourse.

His modus operandi is sperging out.

He went full retard. You never go full retard. (Pretty sure Iron Man said that.)


Sent from my Smartphone

[timb]

Deathwish,

The forum is full of self styled experts on this that and the other. People who without putting forward a tiniest bit of proof of the self ascribed expertise  are happy to piss on those who have put in the hard yards and presented a product with significant level of utility.

Keep well and keep a level head in these troubled chambers.

Yes, because that describes Vincent perfectly. Wait...


Sent from my Smartphone

[Deathwish]

price dropped to $49 again.

[ez24]

price dropped to $49 again.

Could this be his way of apologizing?

I was watching this post trying to figure out what AutoTRAX could do when the blow up occurred.

Could I design a simple 2 layer board and create the files needed to send to have the board made?  I would like to make a LM317 board with a couple of components just for fun.  I cannot even figure out how to download Kicad let alone use it.  Would this program work for me?  Thanks

[pickle9000]

price dropped to $49 again.

Could this be his way of apologizing?

I was watching this post trying to figure out what AutoTRAX could do when the blow up occurred.

Could I design a simple 2 layer board and create the files needed to send to have the board made?  I would like to make a LM317 board with a couple of components just for fun.  I cannot even figure out how to download Kicad let alone use it.  Would this program work for me?  Thanks

Yes, the software is good.

[firewalker]

price dropped to $49 again.

Could I design a simple 2 layer board and create the files needed to send to have the board made?  I would like to make a LM317 board with a couple of components just for fun.  I cannot even figure out how to download Kicad let alone use it.  Would this program work for me?  Thanks

Yes. It should be trivial and straightforward for the use you need it.

[Circlotron]

Has anyone here tried using Autotrax on Wine?

[firewalker]

I tried the free version. It doesn't work. It was falling the installation process. If I remember correctly, there is an optimizer that compiles a part of Autotrax when installing.

Alexander.

[Wilksey]

Has anyone here tried using Autotrax on Wine?

yes, my traces were all squiqqly and I couldn't see properly, but I had fun doing it. I think.

[ez24]

http://kov.com/

price dropped to $49 again.

Back to $99 again   

We need a yo-yo icon

[IconicPCB]

EZ too bad you missed out on a bargain!

[pickle9000]

He should start up a mailing list so when he puts it on sale for $49.00 he can inform people. And perhaps have a draw for a free copy selected once a month or whatever to encourage the sign-up for the list.

[0xdeadbeef]

I'd take it as $49 saved that can be invested in a tool which doesn't annoy you by completely messing up everything each time you move a component.

[Kintekobo]

For what it's worth I was trying out this software with a VERY simple Atmel minimum system just to see how easy it was to use, and although it had a few quirks it seemed ok. Until I went from the schematic to the board layout and had the auto-router route the rats-nest. I noticed something strange about the connector and when I went to 3D it was pretty obvious that it had routed one bus right over another. Unless I have done something stupid, which is possible but hard to see what on such a simple board, it would seem that a router that crashes buss lines would be a show-stopper for me.

I went to the website to raise a support issue but there doesn't seem to be a proper support point, more of a request form and no facility for uploading screen caps, so I am going to upload them here. If Iliya is checking this, perhaps he can investigate what went wrong.

[c4757p]

To be entirely fair, I wouldn't judge an EDA package by something as useless as the autorouter, and writing a good autorouter isn't a task I'd expect an average programmer to be up to. I would recommend to Iliya making it capable of importing and exporting something like Specctra format which many external autorouters can use. Nobody's going to use your built-in autorouter because you clearly aren't the sort of computer science wizard that is needed to develop that sort of heavily algorithmic software. That's not an insult, neither am I.

(That said, the autorouter producing overlaps is a complete failure and should be fixed, it shouldn't be capable of that. If it can't route it should just fail the difficult routes and let a human do them.)

[Godzil]

I would suspect there are also some DRC issues on some pin of the ATmega chip..
And I agree with C4757p, the level of complexity of a not so bad* autorouter is really really high, calculation of the best route is something really difficult, especially on PCB design when you have so many limitation. They are mainly the DRC, but also that two different track can't cross, that you must not make a 90° turn on a track (or the electron may fall) etc...

* I didn't say a good one because everyone knows they don't exist

[Kintekobo]

I understand and agree with what you are both saying, but I do think that a fundamental rule of a router would be 'do not crash nets'. I don't do a great deal of circuit construction and have mostly used (don't laugh) Eagle since it was just about the only product available to the hobbyist at the time and I got used to its quirks and the limitations weren't too restrictive for the small boards I made. So in my case it was quite straightforward and easy to spot the cock-up. If however I was producing a very large board with hundreds of connections then an auto-router that joined together two unconnected nets would render it completely un-usable as you would never be able to trust that it hadn't done so somewhere. Physically checking every single link would be more trouble than routing the whole thing by hand as far as I can see.

[Godzil]

That's for sure, track that collide like that or *for me* from the pictures you put the tracks on right side of the atmel chip near the middle, there are a few track that seems really close to the pad just on top, not to speak (but that's not a real issue, just a visual one) the track on the right most area that goes to a cap end quite curiously

[Kintekobo]

Godzil, if I understand you right you are referring to the strange way the tracks wander about? That was one of the most annoying things with the software when drawing the circuit. You go to join two points together both on exactly the same grid line and the track would insist on flipping up and down. Anywhere but on what should be the direct line between the two points. Very odd and quite annoying.

[Godzil]

Kintekobo: Yes that about that, the track on your cap is comming from the bottom, but it really wanted to join from the right, that really intriguing

[pickle9000]

I've always found autotrackers to be kinda wanky. I have used the one in AutoTRAX but the boards I've been doing are very simple, even so I do pretty them up afterwards.

[Kintekobo]

I'm no expert by any means and I have fairly limited experience of the different auto-routers, but what I always tended to do was lay the power and ground lines by hand, followed by the most important net connections and then let the auto-router pick up the rest. This always seemed to work fairly well. However I don't think that I ever had one auto-routed that didn't need a fair bit of tweaking afterwards.

[Circlotron]

I think that the more you use an autorouter on a given board the less you can claim that it is "your" artwork.

[pickle9000]

I think that the more you use an autorouter on a given board the less you can claim that it is "your" artwork.

Fair enough, for me it is money related. An autorouter helps speed up the design process, simple.

[mswhin63]

I have seen this thread stray a lot. I think Deathwish should have provided a link to the offending article  saying $49 so that it could be confirmed. No-one actually confirmed the price to $49 before going back to $99 if it did at all.