How to add text to Groundplane?

lima7 wrote on Fri, 29 June 2012 05:51

Hi,

 

My board includes a couple of items of text >DRAWING_NAME and

>last_date_time.

 

What I'd like to do is to have these two items appear in copper on the

finished board. This can be done very simply, just by putting the text in

the appropriate place on the board and making sure it get printed with

the artwork. The problems comes when I also want to add a groundplane, I

can do this quite easily, and the groundplane will 'flow' around all the

tracks and pins, however it will overwrite the text.

 

I could move the text to somewhere where there is no groundplane,

except that the only place on the board where I do have space for the

text is right in the center!

 

Any solutions?

Yes, if you want a void in the middle of a polygon then you have to draw

two "C" shaped, overlapping polygons that have the same rank and named with

the same net name.  Then the copper will flow into each other except in the

center.  Then the copper text you put there won't be flooded over and you

won't get any DRC errors either.

Cheers,

James.

--

James Morrison  ~~~  Stratford Digital

Specializing in CadSoft EAGLE

• Online Sales to North America

• Electronic Design Services

• EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

You can mark out the the area of the polygon you want clear with a rectangle

or polygon drawn on tRestrict (for the top layer poplygon ) and place your

text within it.

Warren

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Viewed / responded via the newsgroup at

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warrenbrayshaw wrote on Fri, 29 June 2012 16:34

You can mark out the the area of the polygon you want clear with a

rectangle

or polygon drawn on tRestrict (for the top layer poplygon ) and place

your

text within it.

Right, that works on top and bottom layer.  That doesn't work on inner

layers.  If you do this you want to draw lines on the t,bRestrict layers

and place the text inside of that.  If you use a rectangle then you'll get

DRC errors of the copper text in the area where there shouldn't be any

copper (that's what a restrict area is).

But I forgot that V6 has a much better solution:  cutout polygons.  Here,

you just draw a polygon where you want the voided area and flag it as a

cutout (change polygon pour type from solid to cutout).  This is a much

nicer solution and is useful for all kinds of reasons.

Cheers,

James.

--

James Morrison  ~~~  Stratford Digital

Specializing in CadSoft EAGLE

• Online Sales to North America

• Electronic Design Services

• EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

James Morrison wrote:

warrenbrayshaw wrote on Fri, 29 June 2012 16:34

>> You can mark out the the area of the polygon you want clear with a

>> rectangle

>> or polygon drawn on tRestrict (for the top layer poplygon ) and place

>> your

>> text within it.

>

Right, that works on top and bottom layer.  That doesn't work on inner

layers.  If you do this you want to draw lines on the t,bRestrict

layers and place the text inside of that.  If you use a rectangle

then you'll get DRC errors of the copper text in the area where there

shouldn't be any copper (that's what a restrict area is)................

 

James.

True, and much better. You also need the polygon orphans turned off which

may not suit in all cases.

Warren

--

Viewed / responded via the newsgroup at

news.cadsoft.de

Thanks guys, a colleague suggested a better solution. Apparently a filled

polygon should  NOT overfill text, I re-installed Eagle and it started

behaving as it should. (I also tested the first solution above and can

confirm it works.)

Cheers

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

Thanks guys, a colleague suggested a better solution. Apparently a filled

polygon should  NOT overfill text, I re-installed Eagle and it started

behaving as it should. (I also tested the first solution above and can

confirm it works.)

Cheers

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

If the rectangle is in the bottom layer (as example the bNames layer), do not forget to activate it at the manufacturer site (usually there is not extra cost)