Hello, I wondered if there was an eagle cad expert out there that can help me understand this problem. please forgive me I am new to designing parts in eagle and I dont think I drew the relay symbol and capacitors correctly but the pins should be labeled properly.
Project: I am hand etching my own board to make an attiny chip control a spdt relay.
Problem: I am trying to create a ground plane in eagle to connect all of my grounds to on my board. I can not figure out how to associate the ground pins on the devices to the the ground plane itself so they connect when auto-routing during the board layout.
What happens: either I draw all of the grounds in the schematic of the board and eagle routes traces from ground to ground despite the fact that I have created a ground plane, or if I disconnect all of the grounds of the devices in the schematic eagle just ignores the ground pins and connects them to nothing during board layout.
I have attached examples of both scenarios schematic and board layout.
Draw the Gnd plane using Polygon. Rich click on it, Name it Gnd.
Do that for both top & bottom layer when using double sided boards.
When you click Rats Nest, all Gnds will connect where there is room around pins. You may have to move traces around to open up paths, or add vias & Name them Gnd to connect chunks of Gnd plane together.
I think OP already did it (see the exclusion regions around pads) but didn't name the polygon GND. I guess double click a line boarder may select the polygon? I've only done it in initial setup and never touch it again throughout my designs.
I draw the polygon outside of the board dimension lines. Then it can be Ripped up (one click to select it, then a 2nd to actually Rip It), leaving just dashed line of the outline if you want to look at traces more clearly.
I make the top and bottom polygons look like two books stacked together but the top book rotated 90 degrees so the two bindings are crossed, or simple top is quite a bit bigger than bottom. That way it's easy to select them since the top layer boarders are out of the way of the bottom layer boarders. I think I learned it from a tutorial.
I was going to do the entire board as surface mount but I realized after I ordered parts that some of the parts I ordered were wayyyyyy too small to solder by hand... the good news is the diode and resister kinda work like jumper wires and made it easier to get a compact board that was one sided. For mounting sockets and relays I just bent the pins out sideways and made a part in eagle with an appropriate footprint. the big pads are to connect wires out to solenoid valves off of the board.
Nice etching. I found some advice a long time ago that after soldering and cleaning off
the flux you can apply a lacquer or vanish to all the bare copper to stop it tarnishing,
otherwise after a few years the board won't look so nice. Fingerprints show up very
obviously after time passes I've noticed.
Yes - I use 99.9% anhydrous Isopropyl alchohol for cleaning off flux with a stiff brush.
Distributed by MG Chemicals, my "local" (35 minutes away) electronics suppliers carries it.
