--- In [email protected], "davidmilne84" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi there > > I have a couple of questions I was hoping someone could help me with? > > I want to create a single sided PCB with a ground plane on the same > side as the tracks. I am trying to create a fairly simple PCB with a > microcontroller on it and some IO. > > I found that the auto router is not able to route all of the tracks. > However I have found that it routes the GND tracks as well. I think > this is because you auto route all the tracks before putting in the > Zone. Is there some way you can auto route everything apart from the > GND tracks and then connect the GND's with the zone fill?
For a single sided board like this, it is safest to route the ground tracks and not rely on the zone to make all the connections. The zone will have limits on how it can squeeze through gaps in the tracks to get to your ground pins. Again, I say this ONLY because you are contemplating a single sided board and will have non ground tracks cutting your ground plane. Since the ground tracks are part of the same net, your ground zone fill will eventually cover them and not leave gaps, your posting seemed to suggest that this was not expected, but it is. Lastly, do not use the autorouter in Kicad. IMO it is fully obsolete now that the bridge to Freerouter is available. Use Freerouter. Normally a person would put in the zone outline before doing the export to freerouter, because this would give freerouter license to use the zone to connect your ground pins without using tracks. But remember we do not want to do that on a single sided board (yet). Therefore, add not only the zone filling *after* coming back from freerouter, but also the zone outline in this case, after doing the autorouting in freerouter and back importing. In other words, don't have your zone outline in place when you export to freerouter, force it to do the ground net using tracks. Lastly, I would not assume that autorouting is the best use of freerouter. Its manual push and shove routing is world class, and you can route the board manually in a blink of the eye. Or at least know this, you can autoroute one track at a time by selecting a single pad and clicking autoroute, and if you don't like what you see it doing, use the undo feature and lay that track down manually. When you export the session file and back import to Kicad, then set your zone outline then, then fill. The ground tracks will serve to tie together all the would be/could be FRAGMENTS of your zone plane into a contiguous copper body. tada, Dick
