Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1536171
14 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2025 ture. ey know that experienced designers bring irreplaceable value, but they want to see tools—especially AI—help move the process along faster. eir priorities are speed, repeat- ability, and reducing bottlenecks without sac- rificing quality. What all these perspectives have in common is a desire for routing tools that adapt to the user, not the other way around. Whether it's intelli- gent automation, constraint-driven consistency, or fast setup with minimal overhead, the ask is the same: Help me get to a clean, manufactur- able board faster and with fewer headaches. Are more designers using autorouters? I think many designers still won't use them, but I am meeting more designers who do. Why should a designer who has always done manual routing now consider autorouters? We are seeing a gradual, but real, shi. More designers are giving autorouters another look, especially as project timelines tighten and team sizes shrink. e idea of saving time without sacrificing control is becoming more appealing. But with that shi comes rising expectations. Many users want a router that can deliver near-perfect results: 100% completion, tight adherence to length/delay constraints, and full impedance control. at level of precision isn't unrealistic, but we're not quite there yet. For now, it's still faster and more reliable to route the most critical signals manually and use auto- mation to handle the rest. at's where design reuse comes into play. We encourage teams to build and reuse golden circuits—trusted, validated design blocks that can be dropped into new layouts. is approach reduces setup time, ensures consistency, and helps teams meet performance requirements without reinventing the wheel. Designers who've always routed by hand should know that modern routing tools aren't asking you to give up control. ey're giving you the option to work faster, with assistance that aligns with your intent. Whether you use full automation, interactive routing, or assisted patterns like those in our mimic router, you stay in the driver's seat. ere is a sea change underway, and it's not about replacing the art of routing; it's about making it scalable. What would you say to designers who have never used an autorouter? They say they're hard to set up, the design looks bad, and they only get 80% of the nets, with the remaining 20% taking forever to clean up. We've absolutely heard those comments, and they're not wrong, especially if your only expe- rience with autorouters came from older tools that prioritized speed over quality. e truth is, autorouters have never been perfect. at dates back to the Racal-Redac Bloodhound days, where a simple "frame-select-go" opera- tion would get you something—functional, but rarely elegant. What hasn't changed is that autorouting isn't meant to replace a skilled designer; it's meant to accelerate the parts of the job that don't need artistic finesse. A progressive autorouting approach still works best. Routers that support multi-pass strategies, with smart smoothing and cleanup algorithms, can push you from zero to 80–90% completion quickly. For many engineers, that's Andy Buja