[sdiy] Ground planes

[David G. Dixon]

> Pads which are connected to the ground plane are connected by thin
> tracks, called 'thermals'. The reason being that if they were simply
> a part of the ground plane not covered by soldermask, the groundplane
> would act as too much of a heatsink to be able to do a decent job of
> soldering to the pad. David is complaining that even with the thin
> traces, the groundplane makes soldering much harder.

I concur that soldering to planes is a pain.

However, on my layouts, I generally put at least 0.1" of trace between pads
and planes, and I see absolutely no thermal effect.  The "thermals" should
work fine.