Freerouting Versions Save

Advanced PCB auto-router

v1.9.0

6 months ago

Many things improved since the last release including bug fixes and improvements, and I would like to highlight just a few:

Global settings file (freerouting.json)

We now have a global freerouting.json file stored in the temp folder for all the defaults that we use. They don't cover all the settings we have just yet, but you can still have more control over the processes than before. Command line arguments can override them, just like before. Freerouting now can remember your the default folder from where you opened your last board, yay!

Modern, KiCad-like color schema

The color schema was modified to match KiCad good-looking, more modern look: image

Analytics

Added Segment's Analytics framework to the code, so we finally can get insights from anonymous usage statistics. This is a crucial step moving forward, because the plan is to have a feature reduction release in the near future, where we can get rid of all the functions that are not used by you. You can disable this by using the -da command line argument.

Various changes

We fixed a few issues with keepouts, component rotation and snapshot files, added more robust 2+ layer support, automated version checking, new dialog boxes (with -dct command line argument to set the timeout), fixed high DPI texts, fixed KiCad plugin issues (including on-demand JRE installation) and compile time warnings.

All in all this release is packed with good stuff!

What's Changed

👍New Contributors

🥇Donors

I also would like to thank all of our donors: @digilent, @cpyne and @rozza-m! (see #177 for details)

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.8.0...v1.9.0

v1.8.0

11 months ago

Improved clearance handling, automatic snapshots, new "delete all tracks and vias" feature, loading errors and warnings dialog, KiCad plugin script update, DSN buffer increase and updated translations.

What's Changed

New Contributors

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.7.0...v1.8.0

v1.7.0

1 year ago

Fixed issues with clearances, Java 19, KiCad plugin Java version check and updated the Chinese translations.

What's Changed

  • Fixed the clearance violation problem when route optimizer run in a multi-threaded mode @andrasfuchs
  • Fixed the issue caused by Java 19 @andrasfuchs
  • KiCad plugin prevented the installation because of incorrect Java version detection @andrasfuchs
  • Added application icons to all windows and added window size restrictions where it made sense @andrasfuchs
  • Updated Simplified Chinese Translation by @taotieren in https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/pull/164
  • Bump com.github.ben-manes.versions from 0.44.0 to 0.45.0 by @dependabot in https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/pull/165

New Contributors

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.6.5...v1.7.0

v1.6.5

1 year ago

Added translations for Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean. Integrations for KiCad, EAGLE and Target3001! are now stored in this repo, in the integrations folder. Fixed a DSN file reading issue and added -dl command line argument to disable logging.

What's Changed

New Contributors

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.6.2...v1.6.5

v1.6.2

1 year ago

This is mainly a bugfix and performance improvement release.

Freerouting needs Java developers, UX/UI designers and translators (see #127) to be able to continuously evolve. Please read https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/discussions/81 and consider joining/supporting the project!

What's Changed

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.6.1...v1.6.2

v1.6.1

1 year ago

This is a hotfix release of v1.6.0 that fixes the bug #118 on systems with Chinese and German language settings.

What's Changed

  • Hotfix for #118 by @andrasfuchs

v1.6.0

1 year ago

This release have a new feature that allows users to tell autorouter to skip a net-class. This can be useful for example if you want to manually connect components to GND, VCC after freerouting finished. You have this option in the GUI in the Rules / Net Classes / "ignore by autorouter" column, or you can use the new "-inc" command line argument to set those net classes. E.g. -inc GND,VCC tells the autorouter to not route the connections in the GND and VCC net classes.

The autorouter parameters were slightly modified to improve the end results. It causes the algorithm to run a little longer, but our tests confirmed that it is a reasonable tradeoff. To run the autorouter indefinitely, use the -oit 0 command line argument.

We moved from Java 11 to Java 17.

DSN file reader was upgraded to handle non-ANSI (Cyrillic, Chinese, etc.) characters.

From this release on macOS installer package is not supported. Freerouting still works on macOS by using the .jar release, but it needs a Java 17 runtime to be installed. If someone who 1, has a Mac and 2, is a member of the Apple Developer Program has the time to work on the macOS installer, let me know.

As always, this release contains many small fixes and improvements.

Freerouting needs Java developers, UX/UI designers and translators to be able to continuously evolve. Please read my post about the situation and consider joining/supporting the project!

What's Changed

  • Add "ignore net classes" feature by @andrasfuchs
  • Add warning if multiple boards are defined in DSN by @andrasfuchs
  • Add logic to stop an endless loop if there is too little change by @andrasfuchs
  • Updated repo's README to reflect recent changes by @andrasfuchs
  • Non-ANSI character handling in DSN files by @andrasfuchs
  • Move from Java 11 to 17 (LTS) by @andrasfuchs
  • Fix GitHub Action scripts by @andrasfuchs
  • Move Via and Padstack instantiation after Network parsing by @erichVK5
  • Bump com.github.ben-manes.versions from 0.41.0 to 0.42.0 by @dependabot in https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/pull/95
  • Bump log4j-core from 2.17.1 to 2.17.2 by @dependabot in https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/pull/104
  • Bump log4j-api from 2.17.1 to 2.17.2 by @dependabot in https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/pull/105

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.5.0...v1.6.0

v1.5.0

2 years ago

This release contains improvements and bug fixes, including language detection and Chinese translations, multi-threading locking issue fix, KiCad plugin update, and package updates. Please note that our KiCad plugin update is still waiting for approval from the owner of its repo.

With this release we have performance improvements too, including the multi-threading route optimizer and its fine-tuned settings that can lead to huge time savings. The tuned values are based on test data, detailed here.

We have a few new command line parameters:

  • -oit [percentage]: stops the route optimizer if the improvement drops below a certain percentage threshold per pass. Default is 0.1%, and 0% means to continue improving until there are no more route options to test.
  • -im: saves intermediate steps in version-specific binary format. This allows to user to resume the interrupted optimization from the last checkpoint. Turned off by default.
  • -h: shows help.

Freerouting needs Java developers, UX/UI designers and translators to be able to continuously evolve. Please read my post about the situation and consider joining/supporting the project!

What's Changed

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.4.5.1...v1.5.0

v1.4.5.1

2 years ago

This is a hotfix release that fixes a fatal error when the board didn't have vias and/or tracks.

What's Changed

New Contributors

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.4.5...v1.4.5.1

v1.4.5

2 years ago

The main improvement in this release is the speed of the route optimizer, now we can use all of our CPU cores to get better results.

What's Changed

New Contributors

Full Changelog: https://github.com/freerouting/freerouting/compare/v1.4.4...v1.4.5