Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

You guys probably already know this. But I got a real kick out of
this - when it worked the first time I tried it.

I have discovered one neat trick with Eagle. It is trivial to get a
beautiful "ground plane" around all your traces. While still at
the "rats nest" stage of layout...just place a polygon (simply a
rectangle really) on the same layer as your traces. Make it the
size of your entire board. When you auto route...the autorouter
will automatically isolate all your traces from this "ground plane".
So, it is not really a "ground plane" as it is isolated from
everything else. But, with one little "blue wire" you can make it a
ground plane, if you want. I just do it because it will save on
etch time.

Jim

P.S. BTW, I don't use the default Eagle design rules. I modified
them to make traces twice as wide...and also to leave twice
the "isolation" between traces. With the fatter traces...it is
easier to get a perfect Toner Transfer. I Googled "Eagle Design
Rules" and somebody had posted a writeup on how to change them to
new, consistent values. Very nice of him.