KiCad Autorouting

With the PCB Auto Router plugin installed, you can autoroute directly in the KiCad PCB editor with one click, without exporting DSN and importing SES manually as you would with Freerouting.

Plugin not installed yet? Follow KiCad Plugin first. KiCad 9.0 or later is required.

Toolbar Icons

After the plugin is installed, four PCB Auto Router icons appear in the KiCad PCB editor toolbar:

  1. Auto-set rules: automatically adjusts trace width, clearance, vias and other routing rules based on your design
  2. Full board routing: autoroutes the whole board
  3. Single net routing: routes only the selected net
  4. Plugin settings: opens the plugin settings

Prepare Your PCB Design

  1. Complete the schematic in KiCad and update the PCB.
  2. Place all components and assign footprints.
  3. Set routing rules (trace width, clearance, vias, etc.).

Start Autorouting

  1. (Optional) Click the first icon to auto-set routing rules. If you skip this step, the existing rules in KiCad will be used.
  2. Click the second icon to route the whole board, or the third icon to route a specific net.
  3. PcbAutoRouter launches and handles the routing automatically.
  4. When it finishes, the PCB design is updated automatically.
  5. To adjust settings, click the fourth icon to open plugin settings.

FAQ

"Rule exceeds limit" warning?

This is usually caused by vias that are too large, clearance that is too large, or traces that are too wide. PcbAutoRouter strictly follows DRC rules, so if the rules are not set properly, many areas cannot be routed.

Solution:

  1. Check whether the routing rules in your PCB are reasonable.
  2. Click the first toolbar icon, "Auto-set rules", to let the plugin adjust the rules based on your design.
  3. If you are sure the current rules are what you want, click "Continue routing" to ignore the warning and proceed.

Using auto-set rules first is recommended; it significantly improves the routing success rate.

The software won't open, or shows "Vulkan initialization failed"?

Check your GPU and driver against the System Requirements.