I created a simple PCB design and so I thought I'd give auto router a try.
Below are some screen shots of the end result. Several opportunities to use straight traces and no one was used.
This is not ideal.
What's the point of auto router if it does not take advantage of aligned components and draw straight traces when available?
Hi @RCBakerBorn,
Welcome to one of the most contentious debates among EEs, the Autorouter. Many EEs write them off as the crutch of newbies while others will laud the time-savings even if the results are not the most aesthetically pleasing. I'm somewhere in the middle.
For anything critical, you should route those traces first, the autorouter respects any existing routes and won't touch them. Once you've routed the critical stuff, then you can let the autorouter go to town on what's left. Physics doesn't care if the board is pretty as long as the points connect the board will work.
With that said there are ways to improve the results. When you run the autorouter you'll notice it makes multiple runs the first one is a topological router and will tend to give the most "natural" results at the cost of 10-100x longer execution time. The other runs use a brute force router which is just trying to get everything routed regardless of aesthetics. For a simple board like the one above the topological router may give a better result.
Additionally, you can use Quickroute smooth to straighten out the traces on C5-C7.
Try these out and let me know if you continue to run into problems.
Best Regards,
