Use inner layer planes in layout version 7.x

On 25/10/15 05:52, David Smead wrote:

 

What happened in version 7 that takes away the ability to force use of a

ground plane?  It used to be possible to set the via penalty low, which

would via a signal to a plane of the same name, i.e. gnd.  I want the

ground plane to connect all gnd pads and vias to the ground plane inner

layer, not route gnd around the board.

 

Did V7 remove the "power plane" option? I have a vague recollection of

that but since I never used that "feature" I don't know for sure. Power

planes were of limited use.

These days, the approach is to start the autorouter for ground only,

with low via penalty but, more importantly, a very high cost on all

layers except the one you want to be a ground plane. That should result

in minimal length top/bottom tracks to a via, and the rest of the ground

signal routed on your inner layer. After that, reverse the layer costs

and route other signals.

But I never use the autorouter, so I may be totally wrong.

On 25/10/15 05:52, David Smead wrote:

 

What happened in version 7 that takes away the ability to force use of a

ground plane?  It used to be possible to set the via penalty low, which

would via a signal to a plane of the same name, i.e. gnd.  I want the

ground plane to connect all gnd pads and vias to the ground plane inner

layer, not route gnd around the board.

 

Did V7 remove the "power plane" option? I have a vague recollection of

that but since I never used that "feature" I don't know for sure. Power

planes were of limited use.

These days, the approach is to start the autorouter for ground only,

with low via penalty but, more importantly, a very high cost on all

layers except the one you want to be a ground plane. That should result

in minimal length top/bottom tracks to a via, and the rest of the ground

signal routed on your inner layer. After that, reverse the layer costs

and route other signals.

But I never use the autorouter, so I may be totally wrong.

All that does is route gnd in small traces on the top layer.

I can't find anything in the router that mentions vias.

It has to punch vias close to smd pads through to the ground plane layer.

On 10/25/2015 1:16 PM, David Smead wrote:

All that does is route gnd in small traces on the top layer.

I can't find anything in the router that mentions vias.

It has to punch vias close to smd pads through to the ground plane

layer.

 

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Hi David,

I hope you're doing well. The $ layers(inverse plane layers) were

deprecated with the release of EAGLE V6. All power planes are now

produced using the Polygon command.

Now for the type of routing you want to create you have to setup the

autorouter in accordance with the recommendations at the end of Chp 7 in

the eagle manual.

I've attached two configuration files I use for this purpose.As Rob

mentioned you start the autorouter so that it only routes the plane

signal, you can then load one of these configs and see the result.

hth,

Jorge Garcia