My thanks to Mr. Lomax for finding & analyzing my uploaded file, long before I posted
about it! Let me answer/clarify a couple of the simple points before getting to the
split plane issues...
- the original board did have 2 inner layers (power,ground), one of which I eliminated
for clarity.
- I'm doing the "heat sink" in this fashion -- with vias, and including
electrically-isolated copper on inner layers -- because that is the manufacturer's
recommendation (CP Clare). Note that the article referenced by Mr. Cary appears to
deal with 2-layer boards, so the results may or may not be applicable.
- Finally, Mr. Lomax is exactly correct in diagnosing my problem with the split
planes. What I was attempting to do was follow the diagram shown in the help file
under the topic "Using multiple split planes in a PCB design". The idea is that you
cannot merely draw another split plane in the middle of the first split plane -- you
must extend/deform the boundary between the default plane and the split plane to
create a "hole", and within this hole you draw the boundary of the third split. (The
"hole" is essentially part of the default plane area.) Ironically, I had done this
*correctly* on the ground plane -- the one I deleted for clarity! If I had deleted
the power plane instead, I would have found that the error went away!!
On the power plane, I had deformed the wrong boundary, so that the "hole" was part of
the first split plane, instead of the default plane. As Mr. Lomax said, the result
was that the second split plane overlapped the first split plane.
It is unfortunate that the error message does not say which board layer the error is
on -- this would have been a tip-off to me. (As Mr. Lomax noted, the pop-up selection
for 2 splits on the same layer should also have tipped me off!)
I've posted a new ddb (and removed the old one), which includes the ground plane with
the *proper* boundary arrangements, as compared to the power plane with the incorrect
boundaries. (splitPlane2.zip)
Thanks again to all who offered suggestions & guidance, and to Mr. Lomax for finding
the problem.
Dwight Harm
Trax Softworks, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2001 2:10 PM
<snip>
Mr. Harm uploaded a cut-down version of the file which shows his problem to
the filespace for protel-users-issues. This enabled me to quickly determine
what is going on. Yes, Mr. Harm was probably right when he said that he did
not know what "overlapping" meant in this context. Or he did not recognise
that he had overlapping splits.
<big snip!>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433
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