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Question about Ground Planes in Circuit Stuido

alienjack

Hello, I am new to Circuit Studio. I have a few technical questions about the program that I can't seem to find answers for on line. The first one is... how do I connect a pad, either through hole or SM, to a ground plane?

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  • 0

    Hi Thomas. Thank you for your help. As I stated in my question, I am new to Circuit Studio, so I really appreciate you taking the time out to help me. I will research the site you gave me. How would I construct a net in the PCB design mode? What I need to do is to pour a GND plane on my bottom layer and open up all the pads that need to see ground to it so that they connect. I'm just not sure how to establish a net for a GND plane.

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  • 0

    Hi Thomas. Thank you for your help. As I stated in my question, I am new to Circuit Studio, so I really appreciate you taking the time out to help me. I will research the site you gave me. How would I construct a net in the PCB design mode? What I need to do is to pour a GND plane on my bottom layer and open up all the pads that need to see ground to it so that they connect. I'm just not sure how to establish a net for a GND plane.

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  • 0 in reply to alienjack

    Hi Jack.

     

    In addition to Thomas's suggestion I would also recommend watching the tutorial videos that are on this site if you are new to CircuitStudio and want to get up to speed quickly.

    Getting Started with CircuitStudio: Video Tutorial Series

     

    CircuitStudio works best when you start with a schematic design for your circuit that allows entry of all the parts and net connectivity. This is then used to generate the PCB which you can they layout and route. If you are trying to work on just a PCB then you will find it very difficult because you will need to go around manually assigning nets to pins which is harder than doing the same on a schematic.

  • 0 in reply to alienjack

    See my reply on the other question you asked about PCB scoring.  I think the element14 videos for CircuitStudio will go along way to answer some of your questions and help minimize frustration.

     

    The basic answer to your question might be, once you define a copper pour area/shape on your layer you would configure it and assign a net name.  You might first draw the lines, arcs and such as primitives and then select them and use the Polygon Pour menu to define a Polygon Pour from the selected objects.

     

    Then select the pour shape and configure it as you want.  This will take some experimentation for you at first.

    image

     

    To tie the component pads to the copper pour (or ground flood) you would need to specify how to connect as part of the rules.  In that case, it would be the Polygon Connect Style type of rule.  You might want a relief connect or direct connect or you can instead place nets to manually make the connection.

    image

  • 0 in reply to e14softwareuk

    Hi Peter,

     

    Thank you for your input. I have watched the tutorial videos. There is a tutorial that has 11 videos in all and I watched them. They have helped me a lot and I am getting more familiar with Circuit Studio, but I didn't see where they mentioned connecting a pad directly to a ground plane or how to add a score line to a PCB board, so that you can separate it into two sections. But I will continue to watch the tutorials and search the forum for answers. Thank you again for helping me to get started.