Hi Dick, The cut-out function is ok when editing boards, however it is not available when editing components, means you have to do it one-by-one on the board - which will do for most situations. The other thing is that I find it difficult to create circular cut-outs, whereevr possible I go for square/rectangular ones.
I am actually currently using option B. But the PCB might need to go throuh a solder-wave too so I don't want to have exposed copper on the bottom. Therefore I removed the bottom pad of the hole so that the copper fills now the whole area including the hole. Shouldn't be a problem as PCB manufacturers normally take care of those things and maintain a minimum distance of drill holes to copper areas. So I might go for copper pads on both sides of the hole and just leave the solder mask over the bottom pad, that should do the job for now. While I was doing the PCB I found that when there are zones on a layer and an overall zone e.g. for a power plane is created on the same layer, all existing zones must obviously be exluded with cut-out areas. As an idea for some future version: What about if there would be "zones" as they are now and "power-plane-zones" which would be very similar but would automaticaly have cut-outs for any other zone on the same layer. Or this could be done as a standard feature: If there is a zone inside another zone on the same layer it would automatically get a cut-out around. Anyway, thanks for the help. Cheers, Heiko > A) There is the "Cut Out" menu choice found in the zone menu while the > zone tool is active. You can place voids or holes in any copper area > (zone). > > or better: > > B) If you define all the contact points of your parts as pins, > including the mounting studs, then in the schematic show them as not > connected by using the 'X' No Conn item, then they will show up in the > net list as not connected. This in turn will cause the zone fill > algorithm to stay away from that "pin" when filling. > > > Dick >
