I'm working on a few projects here at work, as well as at home. I've began using ExpressPCB to build a few designs and they look rather good. However I stumbled across this program call DipTrace. DipTrace (free version) is a useful little program that can auto-trace and auto-arrange the boards for you. However these functions are independent from one another. You first auto arrange then you auto trace. The problem I've been having is they dont lay the parts down in a very efficient manor, so you end up after the auto trace with some pretty ugly looking traces. Now I know you can go back and arrange parts yourself, however, whats the point? If I have to do all this work to aid the computer in it's design, I might as well just do it myself.
I guess my questions is, does anyone know of a good, powerful, possible free util that auto traces and auto places decently? I figured it wouldnt be that hard to have a single "optimize" command that would spend a few minutes computing the best possible board layouts.