+Tha autoroute plugin attempts to route traces according to the netlist, +after subcircuit placement is done by the user. There are two modes of +operation: +
+Limiting the operation to selected rat lines only gives some control +to the user; typical use is to route critical nets first, while the board +is sparse and leave less important nets to the end (getting them longer and +have more vias). +
+The autorouter uses only the currently visible copper layers and places +vias and jumps layers where necessary. +
+Before the autorouter is ran, a netlist should be imported, subcircuits +should be loaded and placed. Other plugins, such as the + autoplace or smartdisperse can help with +the placement. After the autorouting, djopt +actions can be used to purify the routed tracks. +
+The plugin implements a rectangle-expansion router, based on +"A Method for Gridless Routing of Printed Circuit Boards" by +A. C. Finch, K. J. Mackenzie, G. J. Balsdon, and G. Symonds in the +1985 Proceedings of the 22nd ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference. +This reference is available from the ACM Digital Library at +http://www.acm.org/dl for those with institutional or personal +access to it. +
+Note: the built-in autorouter is not very smart. There are 3rd party, external +autorouters that can do better job on some boards, and pcb-rnd supports +export/import to communicate with them. + + +