Continue to Site

Welcome to EDAboard.com

Welcome to our site! EDAboard.com is an international Electronics Discussion Forum focused on EDA software, circuits, schematics, books, theory, papers, asic, pld, 8051, DSP, Network, RF, Analog Design, PCB, Service Manuals... and a whole lot more! To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Has anyone used TopoR with Protel DXP?

Status
Not open for further replies.

linuxoid

Newbie level 4
Joined
Jul 14, 2005
Messages
6
Helped
0
Reputation
0
Reaction score
0
Trophy points
1,281
Activity points
1,370
TopoR with Protel DXP

Just wondering if anyone tried TopoR with Protel DXP yet? As they say, you don't even need to do any manual editing, it does everything itself automatically, even moves components to optimize the PCB size with just a click of a button. Has anyone done it?
 

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

Has anyone tried Topor autorouter with Protel DXP? Could anyone tell me how it all works?
 

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

I've used TopoR with DXP, and they work together very smoothly. Please have a look at **broken link removed**. There is a tutorial answering your question.

TopoR imiports and exports data in PCAD ASCII format. As soon as both PCAD and Protel belong to Altium, Protel DXP can import and export PCBs in PCAD ASCII format as well. There is a warning message "unexpected end of file" when DXP imports the routed PCB back from TopoR, but apparently it does not affect anything.

BTW, TopoR was quite amazing, and I guess you won't regret using it. It is fast, and it does not use scripts, so it is easy to use. Routing results looks a bit unusial, but the number of vias and total track length are definitely much less than I've ever seen from other autorouters.

I found that limitation of 125 nets in the TopoR Lite (freeware version) is very generous, it is well above my current needs.

I am just wondering, are you gouing to run Protel and TopoR under Linux, as your nick suggests? :D Please let us know if you manage to do it, it would be rather interesting.
 

Re: TopoR with P*otel DXP

akouz said:
I've used TopoR with DXP, and they work together very smoothly. Please have a look at **broken link removed** There is a tutorial answering your question.

TopoR imiports and exports data in PCAD ASCII format. As soon as both PCAD and P*otel belong to @ltium, P*otel DXP can import and export PCBs in PCAD ASCII format as well. There is a warning message "unexpected end of file" when DXP imports the routed PCB back from TopoR, but apparently it does not affect anything.

BTW, TopoR was quite amazing, and I guess you won't regret using it. It is fast, and it does not use scripts, so it is easy to use. Routing results looks a bit unusial, but the number of vias and total track length are definitely much less than I've ever seen from other autorouters.

I found that limitation of 125 nets in the TopoR Lite (freeware version) is very generous, it is well above my current needs.

I am just wondering, are you gouing to run P*otel and TopoR under Linux, as your nick suggests? :D Please let us know if you manage to do it, it would be rather interesting.

So is the conclution that you can export from DCP to the "ascii" fromat and import it back into DXP ???

Or ???

/Bingo
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

So is the conclution that you can export from DCP to the "ascii" fromat and import it back into DXP ???

I’ve tried it, and it works! Thanks, akouz, for the primer link, I must have been blind and didn't see it.

Import/export was easy and seamless, everything I need is already implemented in DXP and TopoR. Initial TopoR setup was a bit confusing for start, but the primer helped a lot, despite it is written for older Protel version rather than DXP2004. I could not find file “Z80 – loaded” used in the primer in DXP2004 examples. Also to run Protel DRC correctly I had to set not only clearance, but also min and max track width. :)

PS. Well, I tried to install TopoR in Suse Linux, but it wouldn't even start installing, it sayd that it needs Windows NT. So I gave up on that one.:cry:
 

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

’ve tried it, and it works!
Does your design use many SMD components, or is it trough-hole only? I would be interested to hear feedback from somebody who uses TopoR for SMD boards routing.
 

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

It's only thru-hole for now for my prototype guitar amplifier board. TopoR looks and "feels" very different to what I'm used to with other similar programs. It took me quite some time to figure out what it actually does, thanks to the tutorials. Otherwise it would have been very hard to figure out what to do. The funny thing is it looks like it can autoroute forever if you don't stop it. Gotta watch for the vias numbers. When you see the smallest you stop it and play around with it, move and turn components and so on whatever you like. I stuffed up a couple of times and I just pressed on the autoroute again and waited a few more seconds and there you go. It's amazing. Has anyone tried it with Eagle or any other package like FreePCB, PADs, gEDA?

Well, that's not my question. I'm just wondering if there's anyone who tried Protel DXP in Linux with Wine? Anyone here on this forum?
 

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

BTW, a comparison of PCB routed by Specctra and TopoR was recently published at TopoR's forum. They used a fairly complex "BOARD 3" from Protel examples: board size 6.3"x7.1", it has 252 SMD components in both sides of PCB, total number of pins is 2588

-- Specctra routed it in 8 layers, total track length 4.826m, number of vias 2014
-- TopoR routed it in 2 layers, total track length 4.558m, number of vias 1114

TopoR improved track lentgth by 5.6%, via count by 45%.

Here is a link to the board routed by TopoR: http://www.freestyleteam.com/support/download.php?id=benchmark1
 

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

Is it true? Just 2 layers instead of 8? What's the minimum system requirement for it to be able to route it fast? I have XP, AMD Athlon 2400+ and 512 MB. Does TopoR need a faster processor and more memory? I've done mine in about a minute... after I've realized I have to stop it (otherwise it would have gone forever) :) Even though I don't have such a big board, Protel made mine routed on two layers. It wasn't too bad. But TopoR made it on one.

The other thing is it only needs like 5 MB of disk space. Is this right? Or I need to download some additional packages? Protel DXP installs on hundreds of MBs. How come TopoR is so small? Am I missing something?
 

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

I have XP, AMD Athlon 2400+ and 512 MB. Does TopoR need a faster processor and more memory?
This should be more than adequate.

BTW, there is another comparison of boards routed by (Specctra and embedded Protel autorouter) with boards routed by TopoR.
<pre>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TopoR Protel/Specctra
Track_length No_of_via Track_length No_of_via
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Z80 routed" 687 cm 4 775 cm 20
"Routed Board 1" 842 cm 47 910 cm 118
"Routed Board 2" 1453 cm 138 1648 cm 226
"A Sample Board" 2686 cm 197 2798 cm 386
</pre>
 

Re: TopoR with Protel DXP

Just tried TopoR Lite in VMware-WindowsXP under Linux (NLD9 and Suse 9.2) - works fine as far as I can see! Just like in a native windows installation. Now we're talking. Now I can get to some serious business with TopoR in Linux.
 

Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Welcome to EDABoard.com

Sponsor

Back
Top