Hi - I'm going bonkers with this one. I want to put a 50 mil ground plane around the edge of the board. The board has 4 mounting holes in the corner. I first tried making a zone around the edge of the board on both sides and then filled it. I then loaded the board into the freerouter and when it gets near the end of the routine phase, the number of passes goes berzerk. I stop it and check the unrouted nets and there is an error that states it cannot route the conduction zone to ground. The conduction zone is clearly connected to the grounded mounting holes, and the router is smart enough to connect a bunch of grounds to the conduction zone, but it somehow complains that it can't route the conduction zone to ground.
Ok, there's more than one way to skin a cat. I decided to just use kicad to draw 50 mil traces around the edge of the board. So a draw a trace from mounting hole to mounting hole all around the board component side. I then go to draw the same trace on the solder side of the board. I then go back to look at the first trace (on the component side) and there are traces on 3 sides of the board but the fourth side is missing. I then try and redraw the missing piece. Every time I fillin the missing piece, the piece on the opposite side of the board disappears. Did somebody specifically write code to drive me crazy doing the simplest thing? At this rate, the board should be done in 10,000 years. It must be common to put such a ground plane around the edge and then use the freerouter. Any thoughts?
