Hi, On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 4:48 AM, Kai-Martin Knaak <k...@familieknaak.de> wrote: > On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:10:29 -0500, Ethan Swint wrote: > >> On 02/23/2010 06:46 PM, Anthony Blake wrote: >>>> Ok, then. Can you compile a list of tasks that need to be accomplished >>>> before the topo router is ready for general use? The smaler the >>>> individual tasks, the more likely they can be tackled by low time >>>> hackers like me... >>> For sure. It would require some careful consideration though.. I'll get >>> back to you within a week. >> Keep me in the loop, too. > > bump the topic up...
Since this thread started, I've discussed continuing work on the toporouter with my Uni supervisors. They are OK with me taking time off from my PhD if the GSoC thing goes ahead. I would prefer to do most of the core work myself, rather than try and get others to implement my 'half baked' and untested ideas.. The idea of getting someone to implement something that I'm not even sure of myself doesn't seem right.. As for smaller individual tasks.. I was thinking that an abstraction layer for the autorouters might be a good idea. We now have 1.5 autorouters (very soon to be 2x complete autorouters), and an abstraction layer would help future work built on top of the autorouters, such as the auto-plow feature Harry Eaton mentioned, seamlessly switch between the underlying autorouters.. An abstraction layer would also be a good first step towards untangling the toporouter from PCB, and making it more of a general open source autorouter. Another small task, which would *really* help me, would be an automated testing framework for the autorouters. I would like to have some tool which I could throw a directory of unrouted boards at, and for each board it comes back with images of the output from the toporouter & the autorouter, as well as performance results (wiring length, runtime etc). Someone also suggested switching out the absolute wiring length metric with sum of each nets wiring length to MST length ratio.. That would be a good small task to familiarize oneself with the toporouter & autorouter code.. and the results would be very interesting if that metric is also used as the cost function in the net ordering. btw, if there are other little projects or features you would like to add.. I'm happy to help in anyway I can, including being available on IM/IRC to answer questions.. Also, can anyone think of a new name for the toporouter? There is already a commercial tool called the 'toporouter', which I don't want us to be confused with. Regards, Anthony _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user