PCB after zone fill

Projects
1

This is my 1st PCB
After routing, I did zone filing (F.Cu as GND, B.Cu as 3.3V). All routed and no DRC errors. But it looks weird. Am I missing anything? Please suggest.

1152Ă—497 60.3 KB

F.Cu only

1143Ă—492 64.3 KB

F & B Cu

1004Ă—605 36.1 KB

3D view

2

It looks like a 4 layer board. Typically all the tracks would be routed on the outside layers and the inner layers would be zone fills. This means you don’t have holes in your zone where components are. Any particular reason you’ve not done it like that?

Can you be any more specific about “looks weird”?

I’d be a little bit concerned that some of your ground routing is a bit “spindly”, looks like most of the parts around the USB port are connected to the rest of the circuit by a single thin trace on the bottom edge. Also, the EXP GND pad on the (RFIC?) should probably have a much more substantial ground connection with some vias through to a nice thick trace or inner layer copper fill.

For a first board this looks pretty ambitious and generally looks pretty impressive. Well done!

3
  1. How do you create holes in the zone where components are?
  2. By “weird” I mean, the board doesn’t look completely copper filled. So today I connected GND and PWR pads to the respective layers. And now filling seem to cover more areas

Can you please take a look and suggest?

F.Cu only http://imgur.com/UElB17K
B.Cu only http://imgur.com/RrthEOZ
F & B Cu together http://imgur.com/OqN7VKF
GND layer only http://imgur.com/ElAez08
PWR layer only http://imgur.com/uzDUDim
all 4 layers together http://imgur.com/QGB1DLg

4

All I meant about “holes where components are” is that if you put your ground fill on an outside layer the ground isn’t continuous because there are components in the plane. You don’t need to create holes.

The reason you get gaps in the fill is because there’s no way to connect those areas to the rest of the fill. Have a careful look and you’ll see there’s no way to get a connection into the empty areas.

If you tweak some tracks you can make the “empty” areas smaller by grouping tracks better. If you look at each of the tracks on the inner GND and PWR layers and try and redraw them on the front or back, then you’ll get a better fill on these inner layers.

1 Like
5

Moved topic over to the “Projects” category.

6

I agree with Nathan, this will make for a much more contiguous zone but it also means much of your board will need to be re-done. Perhaps send this one off for fab and when you find some of the errors that every PCB has the first time through, you can modify for your next rev.

1 Like
7

Thanks Chris & Nathan
Yes, that’s exactly I’ve done.