Homebrew PCBs

I can't help you with the question about Eagle, but FWIW I don't think there is a way to do that in Kicad, which is the layout program I use. This is one reason why auto-routers have limitations; a lot of folks here do most or all of their layout manually. (Well -- manually as in telling the program where to put the trace; it's still a heck of a lot easier than the old press & stick manual process!)

One thing I have done to include a socket is to use a wire-wrap socket -- the long legs let you mount it as high as needed to be able to solder on the top side and still have it stick out the bottom -- in fact, you'll almost certainly wind up cutting the legs shorter to keep them from sticking out too far. This feels like a kludgy solution to me, but I have used it at the prototyping stage.

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Brian Lalor <blalor@...> wrote:
>
> Does anyone know if it's possible to tell Eagle that standard holes  
> for through-hole components aren't automatically attached to both top  
> and bottom layers?  That seems to be the assumption, and I ended up  
> with an isolated ground plane on my first board.  I fixed that easily,  
> but I'm finding that I need to pay careful attention when laying out  
> the board to ensure that I will have connected the layers together at  
> a given hole where necessary.  For example, it's easy to solder the  
> leg of an IC to both layers without a socket, but if you *are* using a  
> socket, you can only solder to the bottom layer (if the socket's on  
> top).
> 
> Thanks,
> Brian
> 
> --
> Brian Lalor / blalor@...
>      You snooze, you lose
>      Well I have snost and lost
>