BUG: Follow-Me Poor Routing

[C.Nicks]

See the attached screencast. The follow-me autorouter behaves very poorly when attempting to make a very simple route.

I have read all of the information regarding the settings in the manual, but changing the settings has crashed my entire system a few times.

Has anyone been able to get good results using the follow-me?

[edwin.robledo]

Hi C.Nicks,

Have you tried lowering the drawing area grid?, its possible that its needing more path options.  

Let me know.

Ed

[C.Nicks]

Hi Ed,

I do not see any dedicated grid settings for the follow-me router.

The grid in the video is set to 0.1mm.

[jorge_garcia2]

Hey Cameron,

I hope you're doing well. The follow-me router is a feature that was introduced late in the 5 series and really hasn't been touched since. I agree it needs work and that's one of the goals moving forward.

My experience with it not too different from yours. I find that Follow-me from both ends tends to work better than Follow-me from one end.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[matt.berggren · Accepted solution]

Hi Cameron,

You should be able to update EAGLE from the Control Panel today (under the License Information page) and you will be able to download 8.1.0 of EAGLE.  This includes the new obstacle avoidance and walk around routing.  This is not a part of the follow-me router but a completely new and vastly improved algorithm.  Give this a try and hopefully this solves many (if not all) of these routing issues you're having!

Best regards,

Matt

[C.Nicks]

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the update. The new obstacle avoidance router feels far superior to the follow-me router. I've had it do a few strange things but overall I'm really liking it. It's very smooth and responsive.
I want to say thank your for your work on it. Eagle has needed something like this for a long time and I'm glad you and your team are improving it the way you are. I took a quick screencast last night on my first initial impressions and had a small bug clear up on itself.

[jorge_garcia2]

Hey Cameron,

When you saw the forbidden symbol, it's basically EAGLE telling you that the route is in a violation so it can't walk around. This can happen if you have tRestricts on the board and you start a trace within a restricted area, EAGLE will see that and switch to ignore obstacles internally. That's just an example but I think you get the idea.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[C.Nicks]

Yeah I figured it was something like that. It's kind of sad that the Restrict layers control that, considering I use those layers to pretty up the ground pours. I tend to have a ton of little lines drawn in the restrict layers to keep the polygons from pouring acute angles. I'll just have to make sure to clear those out when I route.

SUGGESTION: Restrict polygons from being able to pour acute angles (acid traps). This could be done with a minimum angle setting or some kind of smoothing setting.

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi Cameron,

I hope you're doing well. Have you considered using cutout polygons for this purpose? I know it's not the same as the restrict layers but you can create similar voids using them.

Your use case is interesting, I'll bring this up to the devs and look into what might be a good way to avoid polygons pouring acute angles in copper. This is a slippery slope because polygons are sometimes used as a drawing object so the accute angle might be necessary in a given situation.

Thanks again for your comments.

Best Regards,

[C.Nicks]

Hi Jorge,

Yes I have used cutout polygons to achieve this, but it is so much more work than just drawing a line on the restrict layer. It was awesome when I found out that I could easily control the pour shapes using the restrict layers. I do a lot of RF design and this helps immensely. I only wish I could have them on internal layers too. That's where I have to use cutouts.

I know my use case is not typical and I can easily make the final adjustments after routing. I use the restrict layers as a final cleanup before producing gerbers. It allows me to clean up the pours and reshape thermals. A lot of times I only want a single or double thermal on a large pad instead of the normal 4 and it gives me a lot of control on the finished product.

Maybe using another set of restrict layers for routing only would be a good idea. That way there is independent control.
As for the idea of restricting acute angles, I don't think it would be good to make it a globally active setting. Instead you could have another checkbox and  number entry in the properties called 'Restrict Angle' or something to that effect. Personally I never want a single feature tighter than 90°.

I would also like to suggest that polygons get a lock option. That way if part of it gets caught in a group, it will stay put.

This is an example of part of the polygon settings in Altium where ther is a setting that removes necks when they are smaller than the setting.

Currently that is controlled by the width setting, as it uses that sized line to pour in the polygon.