midnight salmon
Hello, I have relatively new to PCB design and I have a question. Why are these traces (see picture) surrounded by a darker color and why does it just fully "change" color at one place? (circled in red)
Thanks in advance to whoever is willing to help!
ashen sapphire
Generally, most board designers will do a "ground pour", where any area not covered by traces is hooked up to ground. This is closely related to the concept of a ground plane, where the majority of a whole copper layer will be dedicated to providing a ground connection. So all the ligher blue you see is stuff that has vopper underneath, either from a trace or from ground
but between pins or around edges of the board, it can happen that there is not enough board area there for a ground pour to make sense. In this case, the ground connection will not be extended there and the copper will usually end up being etched away along with any deliberate insulation, like around a trace
midnight salmon
Ah, that makes sense. I am also guessing those "floating" traces that aren't connected to anything are there because this is a multi layer PCB.
ashen sapphire
yeah, those circles at the end of those traces are called vias, they connect through a hole in the board to the other side
midnight salmon
Thank you so much for the help!
leaden basalt
