Emanuel We also suspect Protel is at fault for the 28 mil holes. I think it is a default in Protel setup. As far as High Speed design rules, You will need to stick with spectra for now, since Electra does not support differential pairs of matched lengths. I did not try blind and buried vias, but I did use prerouted "via in pad". Electra was cleaner since it let these connections alone and I did not have to create any "forget" commands. We also tested the "BUS" command on both routers. The test board was a simple backplane with identical connectors on same Grid. Spectra was slightly better however, neither Electra or Spectra routing would be acceptable with this command. One thing we did notice....since both routers use a "manhattan" topology to place traces, On large busses, Electra has very few loops. It sticks to the floorplan very well. I have a tendency to use the "limit way" command on most of my designs. This forces the router to lay traces parrallel to each other on the same layer. This increases the density of the routing. Limit way is a little tighter on Spectra. I ran tests on both routers, using limit way then ran test without limit way. In both cases, Electra managed 500-700 less vias out of 7800.
What I was most impressed with was that it left the locked preroutes tollally alone. Honestly, this is the first router that this worked with. If you think Spectra is leaving them alone, look closly at your design. On some occasions it place traces either over or around your preroutes. The only way to avoid this is to create "forget" classes. Here is the way the classes and DSN file works in Protel. Protel does not export classes. I wish it would. If you want to create widths lets say for DATA D0-D7, created a classs called DAT0_7, then create and invidual width rule for that class. When Protel exports the DSN file , it will assign an INDIVIDUAL rule to the nets in the class. The same applies to via type, toplogy, max via, and clearance. Protel extracts the class and breaks it down to net. That is perfectly fine ...perhaps cumbersome but it works. You still may want to look at this router. ELecta is working on adding High Speed rules Mike Reagan EDSI Frederick MD * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
