peg@psuecl.bitnet (11/14/89)
>>> Oh, can anyone recommend a cheap auto-routing PCB design package? > > I don't care, but preferably somthing DOS, GEM (i.e. IBM or Atari ST), > or Amiga. Don't wanna buy a 386i or Sun-4. Damn, damn, damn! I will never throw away another thing in my life! I had hardcopy of info I received on PCLO--now BoardMaster--for the Amiga. See Dave Haynie's post on here. I had inquired about PCLO on comp.sys. amiga. Someone replied with copies of earlier postings which I threw out just a few days ago. Anyway, BoardMaster is an upgrade of the original PCLO that cost $1000 or so, and it now costs about $80 mail order. Yes, $80. Its main limitation is that it only lays out parts on a 0.050 or 0.025 inch grid--DSUB connectors and some other stuff is difficult to fit. For the money I really don't think you can complain in the slightest. If you are doing hobby or small production work, BoardMaster may be good for you--but it won't keep up with the pro stuff on "other" computers. As for autorouting: the authors suggest using ARexx to implement it. I have no idea how practical a suggestion that is: I haven't used ARexx. I actually talked to someone at the publisher and it sounded like it HAD actually been done and did work. Features from an ad: 60 PCB ARexx commands library facility multiple silks excellon drill tapes iff images of boards interactive router diag or rect dynamic trace sizing global trace following autorouting w/ ARexx export hole size to silk auto dip,sip,pga global undo onscreen plotter simulation macros pan w/ prop gadgets not copy protected Needs more than 1 Meg! About 960k. support for hpgl, hiplot, hpljII Schematic capture on the way for about the same price. So there it is. You could easily use a utility to do hpgl to printer conversion. Hope this helps. By the way, I am not associated with Black Belt Systems in any way. I was looking for PCB software, found this, and as soon as I can buy 2Meg of RAM I will buy the software!! Some dealers have BoardMaster (make sure they have the PCB--not the game!!) or call: Black Belt Systems 406-367-5509 Good luck! (GO AMIGA!!) Paul
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (11/15/89)
in article <65559@psuecl.bitnet>, peg@psuecl.bitnet says: > Anyway, BoardMaster is an upgrade of the original PCLO that cost $1000 > or so, and it now costs about $80 mail order. Ah, so. I'm glad to see it lives on. I figured it must still be around somewhere. > As for autorouting: the authors suggest using ARexx to implement it. > I have no idea how practical a suggestion that is: I haven't used > ARexx. I actually talked to someone at the publisher and it sounded > like it HAD actually been done and did work. With a good AREXX interface, it's certainly possible. Basically, AREXX does two things for you. First of all, it's a powerful script language, IMHO better than the CShell in UNIX, and far, far better than the standard "Execute"-driven Amiga scripts. AREXX can open any Amiga library and do pretty much anything else a normal programming language does. The second thing AREXX does for you is it allows programmers to provide a standard programming interface to their applications, which you can use for building applications systems. So it's perfectly reasonable to expect that you could write an autorouting module that accesses the internal BoardMaster database via AREXX. In fact, it's possible to write that autorouter in AREXX itself, though it would be pretty slow -- AREXX is interpreted. Not that writing an autorouter would necessarily be trivial. Though, once written, it would be usable for any PC board program with a similar AREXX interface. > Paul -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Too much of everything is just enough