Page 116 - Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE from Schematic Designs to Finished Boards

CHAPTER 5

Laying Out a Printed Circuit Board

I n this chapter, you will first look at the various commands available to use when laying out a

PCB and then make two example layouts for the bar-code example of Chapter 4. One of these
layouts will use a typical hobbyist’s through-hole design. The other will use mostly surface-mount

components. In the final section of this chapter, we spurn the help of the autorouter, lay out the same
example manually, and compare it with the automatically generated layout.

Experimenting

Before starting on the sound meter example, you will be experimenting with the many features that are
available through the Board Editor. To have something to experiment with, use the board from the
flasher example of Chapter 2 (Figure 5-1). During your experimentation, you are quite likely to
completely mess up these project files, so remember that the original files can always be downloaded

again from the book’s website (www.simonmonk.org).