Hi Steve,

..., and thanks. There are times that I'll do a dozen boards in a few months, and then there are times that I go for months and months without doing any. It just depends on what I'm working on at the time. So who knows when I'll get the next opportunity to put this autorouter through its paces. And even then, the odds are good that I'm going to need to finish it "yesterday," which means that as long as it's still running I'll probably end up using Protel anyway.

All in all, just from the little bit I've played with it, I suspect this DesignSpark PCB is going to work just fine. My introduction to autorouting, and EDA in general, was in the late 1980s with ORCAD (the DOS version, and yes, I even built library parts with a text editor) and Protel AutoTrax. Back then the autorouter would do 95% of the board and leave the last 5% for you to do manually. Since the last 5% of the job took 95% of the time, I found I just preferred doing the whole thing manually.

Then one day, many years later, I found myself forced to buy real EDA software. The DRC in my econo-package lost resolution down at superfine pitch spacing, so I bought Protel 99SE. For the first time since 1989 I tried an autorouter and was astounded to see it finish 100% of a job that would have taken me many hours in just a couple of minutes. I've not done any manual routing since (except to put my logo on a client's board).

Anyway, especially if this one is based on a well established commercial package that you like, I suspect the technology is sufficiently advanced now that I'll be pleased with its performance. Still, I appreciate you letting me know how your new version works. Thanks again,

Joe