Autorouter eats prior fanout and vias

((This problem is solved. I made this post to inform others.)) Still being new to the OrCAD and its autorouter, I'm having trouble. I used the Route / Create Fanout command on each system to create a fully saturated fanout for each symbol. (Fully saturated? Think organic chemistry. C's and H's.)

When I ran the Route / PCB Router / Route Automatic... command, however, all that work got thrown away and redone in a less neat manner. Within the Automatic Router, I did select "Specify routing passes" and "Protect existing routes". Later noticing 5 initial Fanout passes specified under the "Routing Passes" tab, I removed those and this still didn't preserve my previously created fanouts.

In addition, I had some vias successfully connecting shapes on different layers, but the autorouter deleted them. It even deleted them when I had connect lines connecting them. In fact, the autorouter deleted all my previously existing connections in spite of the "Protect existing routes" checkbox.

It seems "Protect existing routes" doesn't work, or at least not the way I think or the doc implies.

Then I found the FIXED property. At first, I set all my prewired nets to FIXED. The autorouter no longer ripped them up, but it also didn't try to route the remaining ratsnest lines on the nets between the fanouts from connected chips.

I then separately marked FIXED all the connect lines and then all the vias on the board. (I set the super filter then selected the whole board.) FINALLY, this worked.

Dunno if there's a better way or not. None of the doc to which I have access helps any more than mentioning FIXED or "Protect existing routes".