Eagle - routing vias directly to ground plane?

Other Hardware Hardware Development
1

Is this possible?

Here's the scenario - I have a board with a ground plane on one side. If I have a SMD on the other side that needs to be connected to ground, I would route as normal to something else connected to ground either on the same side, or on the other side using a via (via a via?) and additional routing.

Sometimes it would be easier to just go straight from the component to the ground plane underneath with a via right next to the component, but you can't do that because the ground connection point doesn't exist until the plane is filled with ratsnest. So you still have to route to the ground connection point first, then when the plane is filled, the ground routing is swallowed up in the fill and you get the desired effect.

Is there some way of just directly flagging the via to be connected to the plane?

2

Yes just change the via's signal name to GND.

3

Ah yes - cheers!

4

Beat me to it.

This also comes in handy with more complicated layouts - sometimes you wind up with the ground plane split into two islands. When that happens, there will be an airwire between the two.

Typically I float a groundplane on both sides of the board, and the solution is to sink a ground via to connect one or both islands up to the other side. That will typically make the airwire go away, as long as you place the via correctly.