I have a 4 layer PCB: front with components, back with components, In1 which is going to be a ground plane, and In2 which is going to be a power plane for 5V with a couple of tracks for 3.3V. All I lack is connecting the grounds and power. I assume I need to put vias as required to the ground plane and then pour the plane. I further assume that I need to run the 3.3V tracks on the power level, and then pour the 5V plane on the power level. Yes??
Yes, just drop vias from the top layer as needed for power and ground and add the inner planes later if you want (or before if you know where they will be). Routing traces on inners is no big deal but polygon fills are really handy too for power distribution. Here is an inner-top layer with digital gnd plane and analog gnd plane connected together with net ties at the right:
And the inner-bot layer below it has a 3.3V plane at the top for the digital stuff, and several polygons at the bottom for distributing different analog voltages:
But here’s a question for those in the know – what are the magenta boxes? That is a new v7 thing.
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Or sometimes you just want to run an extra power trace and embed in in an inner. Keeping it to the outer edge minimizes cutting up the interrupted plane too much:
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locked items shadows?
Hmm. Yeah probably. Can that be turned off?
Thanks for the tips. 
Sure.
Apprearance manager on the right, then Objects tab and Locked Item Shadow
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Huh, I didn’t see the objects tab and then realized I could drag the appearance pane out. Nice. Thx.
Make sure you refresh the board (B last time I checked) from time to time to ensure the inner layers are up to date, especially if you are doing a sanity check on the traces with DRC.
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