Advice re: capacitor placement

[Piotr]

@EkDor

But was thinking if I use a trace for ground from the capacitors back to their IC instead of using the flood plane might help.

Not sure what you mean but it looks that you thing that GND connection with tracks is better than with filled zone.
If you really think like that (I’m really not sure) than it is wrong. You should use continuous plane to connect GND. Some time ago I have given an example of 2 layer PCB designed with whole bottom layer being GND (all vias you see there are GND vias):

Approaching PCB track routing for a newbie

Positioning for me is the main work in designing PCB. If each element is where it is needed than routing is simple. Till now all my PCBs are 2 layers and all of them have GND plane taking 100% of bottom layer. So except GND I design my PCBs as 1 layer. I use microcontrollers in QFP packages without thermal pad at bottom. This allows me to go with VCC under the microcontroller and go out through all corners and all VCC pins. That way GND and VCC don’t disturb my signal connections. At all digi…

If you want to learn about good PCB design you can read articles I have linked in past:

Decoupling capacitor via placement

I didn’t read that book but I suppose you can replace it with: I think it is enough for most pcb designers.

Decoupling capacitor via placement

About 2004 I found an interesting serie of EMC articles by Keith Armstrong (for many years I didn’t know if Keith is a woman or men name). Later they became no accessible, but when I tried to find them few years ago I found them once more: http://www.compliance-club.com/pdf/DesignTechniquesPart1.pdf http://www.compliance-club.com/pdf/DesignTechniquesPart2.pdf http://www.compliance-club.com/pdf/DesignTechniquesPart3.pdf http://www.compliance-club.com/pdf/DesignTechniquesPart4.pdf http://www…

I just noticed that that thread was about Decoupling capacitors so you can also read it in whole.

I’ve never seen two ICs being connected to one USB socket. If such connection is suggested in datasheet than probably everything is ok, but I am surprised.