Auto-Routers and Their Auto-Routing
Auto-routers are really awesome tools in my opinion, but sometimes they don’t do what you want, or they can’t solve your board, or you’ve placed some of your own traces and they’re getting in the way and you need to move them before trying again.
This board was designed for 1 oz copper, and because we’re using it to drive stepper motors and power the raspberry pi, there’s some extra-thick traces, and unrouted space on the top of the board is a copper pour connected to ground. On the bottom of the board is another ground pour, in addition to pours for the 12V and 5V nets to help reduce resistance and dissipate heat.
Routing this board ended up taking around seven iterations, which I can confidently say because each iteration has been saved as a different file on my computer. You can see it here! The top face is on the left (red), and the bottom face is on the right (blue).
