Each piece of equipment has a set of routing rules for how pipelines enter or exit. You can specify these rules (see Defining Equipment Vicinity Routing Rules) to define vicinity routing preferences, or the router will use the default route of the length of a long-radius elbow.

The free space router routes pipelines according to those vicinity rules if there are no interferences and if the short router does not find a minimum route that omits the vicinity route. If these preferential routes are not possible, the AutoRouter will produce an exception and, generally, route the pipeline along the shortest alternate route.