Excellent tips Jesse. I hand route everything as well. Placement is the key - start with the main component (usually a microcontroller). Place it more or less in the center, then move and rotate each supporting component around and watch the airwires - you will find both a location and an orientation that makes routing between the two easiest. Keep doing this for all additional components and pretty soon you'll produce the best placement for all the components. Then pour your ground plane and route all your ground wires. I also hand route all the power wires. After that I usually start on one edge of the board, top or bottom, and work my way up/down until all my airwires are traces. Then go get a cup of coffee and a cookie, and come back 20 minutes later and look at the big picture. At that point you'll see some trace routing that you can optimize. Lately I've found myself going back to the schematic throughout the routing process to change the routing - usually of buffers or inverters - to make physical routing easier. For instance, if you've got 6 inputs and 6 outputs on a chip you'll pick the most direct routing in the schematic but when you place the part you might find that the traces have to go over/under whereas if you go over/under in the schematic the traces will go parallel. A Youtube video is a great idea. I might actually followup on that. caveat I don't do high speed or RF. DougM On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 5:37 AM, Marc Nicholas wrote: > Thank you very much for the feedback, Jesse!!! > > -m > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .