freeroute exited 0 and said nothing when it dropped connections, which
cost real diagnosis time: on rc4 two simple two-pin nets came back with no
copper and no explanation. The grid now records each connection it could
not route, the exact check adds each it rejects, and the CLI lists them on
stderr (the SES is still written; the exit code stays 0, as the JAR's).
A connection whose ends both sit in one zone of its net is listed apart,
as left to the zone fill: freeroute does not route through a zone it
cannot trust to be solid, but KiCad's fill often joins those pads anyway.
A zone outline is where copper may go, not where it ends up: on the rc4
sense board the board-wide GND pours break into islands around other
nets' tracks, and treating every pad inside them as connected left 28
GND islands unjoined (63 unconnected against 42 without zones). Trust a
zone only when a no-tracks rule area covers it on its layer, as the
power stage's pours are covered; route the rest with tracks as before.
rc4, exact engine, resolution 2: power stage 5 unconnected (JAR 12),
sense board 41 (JAR 32), no DRC errors on either.
freeroute ignored the DSN's planes (KiCad's zones), so it never knew that
pads in a pour are joined by it. On the rc4 power stage those pads sit
inside "keep router off" areas as well, and every connection to them was
dropped without a word.
- Read (plane <net> <shape>) and put each zone on the board as a
ConductionArea of its net. Zones are not obstacles: KiCad refills them
around other nets' copper.
- The grid groups each net's pads and zone pieces that copper already
joins (a pad in a zone, two zones sharing a pad) and routes only between
groups. A connection may end on a zone by a via inside its copper, or by
a track where tracks are allowed.
- wire_keepout now blocks traces only, as KiCad's "no tracks" rule area
does; via_keepout only vias; keepout both, in the grid and in the exact
verifier.
rc4 power stage, exact engine, resolution 2: 2 unconnected, down from 8
(FreeRouting JAR: 12), no DRC errors.
The grid search estimated the remaining distance as a straight line even
when only orthogonal steps exist; Manhattan is the tighter estimate those
moves admit and still never overestimates. --heuristic-weight W (default
1) makes it weighted A*: routes at most W times the shortest (tested).
A cell was exactly one trace plus its clearance, so a trace owning its cell
was the whole clearance model, and the 0.4 mm grid could not reach most
pins of a 0.5 mm pitch package: between two 0.3 mm pads a trace's centre
has a legal band only 0.15 mm wide. Resolution K makes cells K times
finer and has every trace claim a halo, the cells whose centre is nearer
than trace + clearance to one of its own, released again on rip-up.
K = 1 has an empty halo and is the old grid exactly (tested). On a 0.5 mm
row, K = 4 gets every pin out where K = 1 gets two. On the rc4 boards, K = 2
cuts the sense board's opens from 66 to 41 (JAR: 32) and the power board's
to 7 (JAR: 12), still with no DRC errors from freeroute's own copper.
Every route starts and ends with a stub from the pin to its first grid
cell, and the grid never saw that copper: on the rc4 sense board 24 of 39
connections the exact verifier rejected had a later route pass beside an
earlier stub. A route's stubs now claim the cells they come near, a stub
must be clear of other nets to be used, and a route may start from any
enterable neighbour of the pin cell, costed by stub length (Manhattan on
the orthogonal track, so a pin on a cell centre still leaves straight).
Tests: a route near a rounded corner keeps its edge clearance; and a
strict xfail that pins down the remaining gap, a 0.5 mm pin row the grid
cannot give a column to every pin of.
rsp2k