My experience with split planes in 99SE is that it doesn't work if you autoroute the board.
I had a design about a year ago that I was initially going to use split planes on (3.3V and 5V nets on the same layer). After placing the split planes, using the autorouter would result in the 3_3V and 5V pins being connected to an *arbitrary* location in the split plane layer. Sometimes a 3_3V pin would connect to the 5V plane, and vice versa. Some of the power vias would even straddle the boundary between the 2 splits, shorting them both together. I can't recall if DRC found this error, I think it did. But that really really sucks, when the autorouter won't obey a DRC rule, and that negates the usefulness of split planes. So I ended up not using split planes, and going to an 8-layer PCB instead of 6-layer. Chalk this up to one more Protel hype-feature that doesn't really work! Software industry motto: 1) Programming is for programmers 2) Product design is for marketing 3) Testing is for users 4) Big pay is for upper management Best regards, Ivan Baggett Bagotronix Inc. website: www.bagotronix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harry Selfridge" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Protel EDA Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2003 12:59 PM Subject: [PEDA] Nested Splits (Was - disappearing split planes) > Steve - > > I know what it says on page 596 of the designer's guide, but you should try > an experiment yourself. Define a plane as VCC, put a rectangular split > VCC1 in the center of the plane, put another rectangular split VCC2 inside > of that. > > You will find that nesting split planes works just fine. We have done > variations on that kind of nesting in several hundred designs without > problems. Perhaps the designer's guide was based on some variation of > Protel99 before it evolved into Protel99SE+SP6. If you should find a > situation where it doesn't work - please let me know. > > Regards - Harry > > > > At 10:50 AM 7/3/03 +0100, you wrote: > >03/07/2003 06:00:02, "H. Selfridge" > ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > >As an aside - there is no problem or prohibition regarding > >nested split > > >planes. > > > >Yes there is - page 596 of the manual you linked to - that picture > >is an explicit ban on nesting split planes - you can wrap sausages > >of planes around islands, but you can't put islands within islands. > >The cleanup you have to do in the gerbers to close the sausages is > >annoying and (as evidenced by my mistake last week) error > >prone. I do wish Protel could just do this properly - does DXP? > > > >Steve > > > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
