I am realatively new to EAGLE and have a couple questions, of which I am
sure the answers are simple, if I knew how to phrase the questions
correctly. Forgive me for my lack of electrical design knowledge, I am a
physicist by trade.
I downloaded an open source design for a stepper motor drive and I want to
make a couple of minor alterations. It seems tricky to make the alteration
I require on the completed board, becuase when I click auto route, it seems
the large areas of copper which fill the voids (wish I new what this was
called) doesn't seem to change to allow knew tracks to "cut" through. I
think I might have a go at making the board from schematic, but the thing I
don't know how to do is create the copper that fills the voids (please
someone tell me what this is called). I know how to move objects around and
use the auto route to do a basic circuit. How to I place the dotted lines
around the board (on the top and bottom layer) that tell the auto route to
cut away tracks from a solid piece of copper rather than make a layer which
is just traces. The design makes use of using the "spare" space on the
board act as a heat sink (presumably by grounding all that excess copper)
Can someone please:
1) tell me what this is called?
2) tell me how to designate the area to do it over (i.e. how to place the
dotted lines)?
3) tell me how to designate the above area to a point in the circuit (i.e.
GND, to make the area ground)
4) give me any useful tips on where to see a tutorial for this, or things
to watch out for?
5) confirm at which stage of the design to do this? I.e. do I place all my
components, then auto route before placing the dotted lines and auto
routing again, or do I do it all in one go?
I hope you appreciate, I would have looked for video on youtube to tell me
how to do this, if only I knew what the process was called.
Many thanks
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