@LM21 fully agree. It will make the history.
Any idea is this PCBRouter able to do something yet? README on git page does not tell much from the current features.
As has been pointed out, this is a matter of resources and ‘opportunity costs’. KiCad aspires to be a professional level EDA software but is only supported by a small team of volunteer developers. There are lots of plans for future developments - here is a roadmap but you will see that autorouting is not included - KiCad Future Versions Roadmap · Wiki · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab
There is an excellent and industry standard method to export a board from KiCad to any autorouter you wish
and plenty to choose from - Freeroute, Topor, Spectra, Electra, Konekt, whatever and a mechanism within KiCad to reimport the result so there is already a way of doing this using both free (Freerouting) or commercial solutions
Nobody is saying that they despise or don’t see any value in autorouting, it is simply that this may be something that perhaps is better done outside or at least separate to the KiCad project.
If there were unlimited resources particularly if there were a number of developers to join who were motivated, I guess this might be different but even then I suspect they would be better placed writing an open source alternative tool.
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Thank you John. I still hope for the future, an increase of viable programmers that can help in this direction. Already great steps ahead have being done. This is another important milestone, in case.
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[quote=“tormyvancool, post:85, topic:30441, full:true”]
Although the very last version of FreeRouter suffers of more issue than the previous one and I still use the previous not because I’m “sticked to the past, like a mussel on the sea rocks”, but because it has not the issue I detected and I was not able to make it works properly…
[/quote]
Thank you for the info you provided? Can you point out exactly which Freerouter version you have find out to work best? I ask because there seems to be many different versions/forks available in many different locations and it’s little confusing to try to figure out what version to try out with Kicad.
- https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting (has something called 1.45 as their latest version)
- https://freerouting.org, could not find their latest source code from there as they claims that their 1.3.1 version is now bundled with LayoutEditor at https://layouteditor.com/
- http://www.freerouting.net/ (Original freerouting authors page)
I remember once trying out some older version of Freerouter but I was at that time just learning the routing and ended up doing everything manually. But I definetly believe that there are many tasks where some interactive autorouting could help my work.
I also used freerouting recently, some examples Programmatically generating schematic
I downloaded the latest release from the github page https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/releases
It has some quirks, but finally works very well. I wonder whether we should open a Freerouting wiki thread here - there seems to be no other forum for that.
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This is the one to use and is has the latest updates. Latest is 1.4.5.1
1.4.5 has a bug with KiCad 6.0 which is fixed in 1.4.5.1
I think this is a fork from the original which has not had a update in quite some time.
I use the previous version since with the new one I got more quirks. In some cases even not any routing. Perhaps some settings should be changed but I didn’t go deep into it.
Ah so there is another update. Ok I will try it, then
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Something strange with the installer
My current version 1.4.4
I want to install the 1.4.5.1 and here below you see the result.
I had to remove the old one to install the new. I think it’s a glitch of the installer
That’s strange - did you download this version:
freerouting-1.4.5.1-windows-x64.msi
yes as you can see from the upper left corner of my screenshot
P.S. Now that I installed it? i tried it. 1 second and my circuit was greatly routed 
EDIT
Is there any way to add a custom button on the main toolbar from which I can start any external appl
ication, in my case: the autorouter ?
You could do this with Python. @BlackCoffee has some examples if you search and this is the official guide
https://kicad-source-mirror.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Documentation/development/pcbnew-plugins/
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Importing and exporting to and from a autorouter is very interesting. Is there something for the autorouter which is in old Mentor Pads CAD. Then we could open the work in Pads and use its better editing tools.
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Guys I think I have been misunderstood here - I am not advocating Kicad implement an Autorouter (far from it). When you take the time to learn what you’re doing you don’t need one
it depends on what you are doing. Do not fall down in the error to consider that ppl is doing things with the complexity you are sued to.
Many ones have much more complexities to achive, and without a valid autorouter, it’s just impossible or not profitable.
Just avoid any excuse to avoid to think to an autorouter. Drop the mentality “can’t do it”, justified by sophisms.
In “it’s not useful for the KiCad project to put existing developer resources into a new autorouter instead of other important features”, where exactly is the “can’t do it” mentality and/or sophism?
That doesn’t work as a universal statement, but is a real argument as far as we are talking about majority of the people who want an autorouter, considering what we know about the state of autorouting in general. If, say, 1% of the users who already know how to route would actually benefit from an advanced autorouter, it doesn’t yet justify the effort.
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Here’s my 2 cents nobody asked for:
I’d prefer having like
Pad stacks
Gate/pin swap
Library/part/symbol management that does not drive you crazy
Tracks/zones in footprints
(naming only a few)
big time over an autorouter which would take years to get anywhere and would drain dev resources for anything else.
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