Setting up thermal relief pads in the design rules of Altium Designer In the example below you can see how the pad connection is set for a thermal relief while the via connection is set as a direct (solid) connection to the plane. You can also specify the type of connection you want. As you can see in the picture below, you have the ability to specify the expansion, air-gap, and conductor width of a thermal relief pad. To do this we will open up the design rules in Altium Designer which is also found in the вЂњDesignвЂќ pulldown menu. The next thing to do is to assign the correct size for the thermal relief pads and clearances that you want on your plane layers. These two internal plane layers also have a вЂњPullbackвЂќ value assigned to them which will keep their edges 20 mils away from the edge of the board.Д¬reating Internal Plane layers using Altium DesignerвЂ™s Layer Stack Manager They have been named вЂњGNDвЂќ and вЂњPWRвЂќ respectively and occupy layers two and three. In the picture below, you can see in that two layers have been added as internal planes in the layer stack manager, which is found in the вЂњDesignвЂќ pulldown menu. The first thing to do when creating an internal plane is to add a design layer specifically for the plane. First we will look at the process of creating a negative or вЂњInternalвЂќ plane. In Altium Designer, you can create your planes either as a negative (Internal) planeВ or as a positive plane (Polygon Pour). Using an Internal Plane in Creating a Ground Plane Once your nets are correctly named, you are ready to synchronize your schematic and layout to begin working with your power and ground planes. The advantage of the power port is that it will connect across all sheets of your schematic without having to attach an offsheet connector to a named net. In Altium DesignerвЂ™s schematic editorВ you can either assign a net name to a net, as pictured below, or attach a power port to the net as you see on the right side. This means that you have assigned the right net names so that all of your power and reference planes can be created correctly in layout. Make Sure that Your Schematic Nets are CorrectД«efore you create your ground or voltage planes in layout, you will want to make sure that your schematic is set up correctly. This PCB design system does a great job of enabling you to create the planes that you need. Any CAD system can do this, but some are better at it than others.

You have the choice of creating a ground plane that is either a positive copper fill, or a negative plane depending on what your needs are. Now instead of being driven by the limitations of those older CAD systems, you can drive the design tools to create the plane layers the way you want them to be. The most you would see in them would be some вЂњXвЂ™sвЂќ where there was supposed to be a connection for a thru-hole pin or via that connected to that plane.

The old CAD systems didnвЂ™t really have the ability to do much with power planes except to designate layers as a bottom layer or the like. This meant that they were usually six layer multi-layer boards, with a ground plane and a VCC plane. It used to be that printed circuit boards seemed to have the same basic layer configuration, or at least thatвЂ™s the way I tend to remember it.

Protel 99se polygon plane