I have an RF design with a RF Power Amp on the board. I has a GND/thermal pad under an SOIC8 package.
In the library part I made, I put the ground pad in the footprint plus I have eight through holes in the ground pad to conduct heat away from the part plus connect the other layer's grounds to this pad.
This is a 4 layer PCB.
Problems:
1) In the library, I would like to name the pad plus the eight through holes to EGND so the ground floods everything and there is no gaps in the ground plane. Eagle requires all pads to be named uniquely. I tried EGND@1, EGND@2, etc. Didn't help.
2) So when I ratsnest the polygons (EGND), clearances are created between the 7 pads named EGND@1, EGND@2. The one pad named EGND is flooded/connected but the other 7 pads aren't. The GND under the SOIC has clearances created by the ratnest command, I must have solid flooding of this pad to the polygon EGND.
I tried putting a Rectangle over this area which works until your ratsnest again. So I ratnest first, add the rectangle, then run CAM. Low and behold the CAM functions ratsnests again and creates new clearances.
Ready to run board but this is holding me up.
How can I fix this?
Thanks,
Don