Homebrew PCBs

"send ugly mess to production"... I don't send anything to production. Virtually every board I make is a one-off, is home etched and is part of a competition robot. The bot must be ready by competition time or whatever amount of time I have spent will have been wasted. 

Forgive me, but I think your needs and most common use-cases are pretty different than mine. My focus is on the robot as a whole. The PCB is just one part of a larger project.

Regards,
Royce






--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Stefan Trethan <stefan_trethan@...> wrote:
>
> I don't think laziness or lack of time is a good reason to use an
> autorouter or 4 layer boards.
> 
> You'll spend much more time troubleshooting and stuff if you don't
> know your board very well, and even more with those internal layers.
> 
> I'd only use 4 layers if it's absolutely nececcary for the design, and
> I never use autorouters.
> 
> Anyway, each his own, but I could never just autoroute a board on 4
> layers and send the ugly mess to production jus to get it done. With a
> hobby it's usually the making, not the getting it done, but maybe I'm
> just old fashioned.
> 
> ST
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:46 PM, roycepipkins <royce.pipkins@...> wrote:
> > Hi Cary,
> >
> > It's because I am an autorouter junkie. I only have so much hobby-time and I believe that using the autorouter saves me a good deal of time.
> >
> > So what I'm really after is a free CAD that will autoroute the 4 layers. I don't want to have to chose which trace goes on which layer, I'd obsess about those choices for countless hours on end constantly wondering if there is a better way. The boards I make are not worth that time investment.
> >
> > With the DipTrace autorouter I just spend an hour or two moving and adding vias to match my assembly process and call it good.
> >
> > My DipTrace process works very well but I don't get the component density I'd like. Also, even though I use a lot of SMD I don't save as many drill holes as I'd like due to all the extra vias that are used merely to hop over other traces. I'm convinced that a 4 layer board will reduce my via count significantly.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Royce
> >
> >
>