Homebrew PCBs

Alan,
The only polygon fills I've done yet are on the bottom layer (blue),
which would be the normal layer for traces on a single-sided through
hole board.  The silk screen, and components, would be on the top
(red) layer.  You'll note that when working with surface mount
components, they are intended to be placed on the red (top) layer.  In
fact, Eagle will demand they be placed there.  For my fills, I'm
interested in filling areas around the pads with ground areas, so the
command you type in the board view is "polygon gnd" without the
quotes.  Then, you select the new drop-down information that appears
on the menu bar...the layer, width, fill type, isolation and spacing
(defining how much unfilled area you want around the traces and pads).
 Then you draw the polygon, and click on the ratsnest (green X) symbol
beside the autoroute symbol.

You can undo this by closing the board file, switching to schematic,
switching back to board, and you'll notice that only the outline of
the polygon shows up.  Type "polygon;" (note the ";") and then click
on the sides of the polygon one by one and they'll disappear.  There
is probably a better way to do that, but that's what I found out
through experiment.

Back to the subject of surface mount devices.  I did a single layer
board, and one of the chips (a passive RF mixer, actually, in an SMD
package) I wanted to use, I wanted to place on the bottom foil layer
to keep the board single-sided.  I had to make a custom variant of the
device with the pins essentially upside down in the symbol and the
pads redefined in the package to the bottom layer in order to do that.
 I did a lot of hunting around in the Japanese tutorial on that one :)

Cheers,
Ted

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "alan00463" <alan00463@...> wrote:
>
> I completed my schematic capture with the freeware version of EAGLE
> and have begun board layout.   I am enjoying it, although I still have
> to learn which layers correspond to the physical layers on the PCB.  
> I am just keeping all my traces in the red layer.   I think that
> corresponds to the copper trace side of the board.
> 
> Now I am trying to figure out how to make a copper-filled polygon in
> the red layer.   I figured out how to make a closed polygonal figure
> with the trace command.
> 
> But my polygons aren't filled.    They're hollow.   Or is that just
> the way they look on the computer screen?  
> 
> I looked in the HELP.    Apparently I have to set the 'fill mode' to
> SOLID for this operation.    How do I do that?   Also, how do I set
> the line width for this operation?
> 
> Alan
>