I'm just fiddling around with POV (which you know is persistency of vision). I built up an 8-LED-Bar with a 74HC595N Shift register on protoboard (I called it iWinkIt), which worked fine for me.
Since dwelling into the depths of Arduinoism and, with it, microcontrolled electronics, i dream of creating my own custom PCB. Now there is this crazy Open-Source-PCB-offer from the guys of Seeedstudio (if you haven't read yet: http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/propanganda-pcb-service-for-open-source-pcb-p-111.html.
Bad news is: I have (better: had) no experience with EAGLE til today. I tried to do a layout, which seemed to work fine for me, but having no experience with EAGLE or getting custom PCBs fabbed, I don't know if it's right how I did it... I bet there are some little (or even big...) mistakes I can't see.
I know here are many people that are very comfortable with EAGLE, so could any of you take a look at my layouts? (of course everybody is invited...)
There are the "standard" files in there (with gerber files, too) and a second try i tried (...) "filled" with copper (also with gerber files).
Thanks in advance to all of you guys (and girls), the job you all are doing on this forum keep greenhorns like me motivated and is so ispirational sometimes!
I've had a look at the gerber files as I don't use eagle. Looks good, no layer offset. If I had to solder this, I'd leave more space between the pads and the filled zones to avoid creating soler bridges too often. Also maybe make the traces wider. Did you use 8mil width ?
Even if you don't go with SparkFun's BatchPCB service, you should look for SparkFun's special EAGLE Rule file. It fine-tunes and adds additional rules for how certain components should be spaced, traces should be sized, and so on. If you can pass that inspection, most quality PCB service houses will have no problems. They also have a few tutorials on effective EAGLE usage, and a nice EAGLE parts library filled with common hobbyist parts (through-hole and surface-mount) that they use on their own boards. I liked their tutorial on tented vias-- much sharper results!
Indeed I used the Sparkfun-tutorials for getting into EAGLE and, a nice side-effect, used the library you mentioned (and the Sparkfun CAM-processor).
As a design-rule file i used the one from Seeedstudio, but also tried Sparkfun's this time, seems to be not that big a difference. I increased the traces to 10mil and the spaces to 8mil (also increasing the isolation between solder pads and the filled zones).
A question just came into my mind: does a PCB-fab-house cut the outline of your board exactly as you see it? Because personally, I don't like all-square and sharp-cornered designs, that's why i miter most of the corners and put those indents and grooves in the outline.
SparkFun's BatchPCB site says they'll cut any outline you make, within reason. You just have to be very clear about what your board outline is, because oddly enough, it's not 100% obvious from the file formats themselves. I put some "documentation" lines and text outside my board's edge, and they figured it out fine, but if I accidentally put it on a copper or silkscreen layer, it would have screwed up everything.
Seeedstudio will accept a Mill layer for board outlines, or internal routes for that matter. Simply draw lines in the Mill layer wherever you want a cut to happen, then add that layer in the CAM job.