Ground Pour |
To start, suppose that you have completed a layout like the Green Ringer shown here.
The highlighted button (next to the GND pad) initiates the POLYGON command. Choose that or enter “polygon” into Eagle’s command line.
And … before you do anything else … also enter “gnd” into the command line. This is a quick and easy way to tell Eagle that the polygon is going to create copper that is part of the ground net. This assumes, of course, that you are using GND as the name for the ground net. That is the default in Eagle and in the gaussmarkov libraries.
Now take your mouse and enter the corners of the area to be filled. I generally outline the entire board and that is what I do in this tutorial.
- First, I clicked on the GND pad in the lower left-hand corner.
- Second, I clicked on the +9V pad in the upper left-hand corner.
- Third, I clicked on the upper right hand corner (outside the bevel).
Before clicking on the OUT pad in the bottom right-hand corner, my screen looks like this:
When you try this in Eagle, you will find that it may be hard to see the outline of the polygon that you are creating. Notice a couple of things in this picture.
- Now there appears to be a solid trace connecting the two pads of C5 that was not there before and the upper right-hand corner has been completed.
- Under C4 you can see the outline of a new trace that is about to be entered when I click on the OUT pad in the lower right-hand corner.
If I were not entering this outline over existing traces then it would be easier to see what I am doing. If you get confused, you can always move your mouse off the layout and see that you are indeed entering a new trace because the outline of the new trace will follow your mouse cursor.
Finally, I clicked on the GND pad a second time to complete the rectangle around the entire layout. Alternatively, I could have double-clicked on the OUT pad and Eagle would have completed the rectangle for me. Here is what things look like now:
You can see the rectangle highlighted in light blue.
Oops, you can also see that I accidentally deleted some of the ground traces as I was creating this tutorial. R10 and R12 are not grounded as they should be. That’s a good accident, because you will see on the next page that the ground pour takes care of this.
Kirby said:
great tutorial… exactly what I was looking for
Posted 14.11.2007 at 9:44 am
gaussmarkov said:
Excellent.
There is more. I have the images already. I just have to find the time. 
Posted 14.11.2007 at 10:00 am
Auke Haarsma said:
Keep m coming! Great tutorial!
Posted 08.02.2008 at 5:16 am
the said:
ch lay bot does not work…
got a tip?
greets
Posted 01.03.2008 at 6:52 am
gaussmarkov said:
the,
your message is too cryptic to offer a tip. there are times when “change layer bottom” does not prevent the route tool from reverting to the top layer when you are starting a new trace from an existing trace that is in the top layer. that’s all that comes to mind and that’s just eagle. you have to take your mouse up to the route tool bar and click on the layer you want.
good luck, paul
Posted 03.03.2008 at 8:59 am
Roman said:
Thanks for the tutorial AND the libraries, this is extremely useful for noobs like me. Your detailed description of the ground pour is the best I’ve seen on the Net, thanks for taking time to do this!
Posted 24.03.2008 at 6:20 am
gaussmarkov said:
hey Roman,
it’s a pleasure to get appreciative feedback like yours!
cheers, paul
Posted 24.03.2008 at 8:44 pm
Allan said:
Loving these tutorials, got my first pcbs started with your help. Thanks.
I’m having trouble getting my top and bottom layer pours to ‘work together’ they are wiping out traces in each ones level. Like this:
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c143/ringworm_1974/Picture1.png
Any tips? is there a way to make a board with just a single layer, this would seem to make sense for small stompbox projects, or am i misunderstanding something fundamental about pcb design?
Posted 23.12.2008 at 4:29 am
Allan said:
I got it figured out! I was clicking on the pour rather than the traces to change the layer.
Posted 30.01.2009 at 7:02 am
Rufio said:
Great tutorail gauss, thanks for the librarys. I made my first pcb, i don’t know if its going to work, but looks ok.
Are you going to continue this tuto? I had trouble withe the tool “autorute”, didn’t like the way the ground line came out.
How do you make de ground line stays around the pcb?
And finally how do i export my pcb to another program, like photoshop, to print it, with other pcbs?
Posted 19.06.2009 at 5:20 pm
Anonymous said:
good tuto
Posted 12.09.2009 at 3:29 pm
Anonymous said:
nice ..
Posted 12.09.2009 at 3:29 pm
RNFR said:
i’ve found that ch wid 1 makes your ground pour edged much cleaner and nicer looking. give it a shot!
and thanks GM, i still refer here often!
Posted 07.11.2009 at 1:57 pm
Parker said:
Great tutorial, but what do those six commands actually do? Becasue now eagle thinks my board is actually 3.7 metres across and I cant seem to change it back…
Posted 08.03.2010 at 2:26 pm
Parker said:
Ah sorry my mistake I was assuming ‘mil’ was short for ‘millimetres’ which apparently it isnt? Must be a yank thing…
Again this is a fantastic tutorial – cheers
Posted 09.03.2010 at 11:40 am
Hawg said:
gm-
I also got the error when I entered the ch lay bot command, because I was still working from the new->schematic from the last tutorial.
If anyone else gets the error, it might be because you are working on a schematic instead of a board. Right click your project and go new ->board.
Posted 08.06.2010 at 12:48 pm
paijo said:
this is what i need…thanks
Posted 11.06.2010 at 1:55 am