AGILENT ADS LAYOUT

ADDING GROUND PLANE


It would be nice to add some metal to our design for the purposes of ground planes.
More importantly, for the sake of the TA and the wear on the fabrication tool, it would
really be nice not to have to remove a 3" by 3" square of copper from your design.

First you need a rectangle to define the final board size and this rectangle needs to be
on the layer "bound".  This defines where the tool will cut out your board.  Ideally,
you should not have your microstrip touching this layer, but inset about 10mil to 40mil
from the edge of the board so that your microstrip line is not shorted to the ground
plane on the bottom of the board.
 


  • Draw - Rectangle
    You can change the layer the shape is one by double clicking
    You can move the edges of the rectangle under
    Edit - Move - Move Edge to fine tune where you want it.

    CREATE A "BOUND" SHAPE

     
     

  • Draw - Rectangle
    You need to add the copper rectangle from which you
    will remove the area around your existing design
    So add another rectangle inside of the "bound" rectangle
    by some distance (say 50 mil) on the layer "cond"

    CREATE A "COND" SHAPE

  • Edit - Create Clearance



     

    THIS WINDOW APPEARS ==>

    Now Click on the new "cond" rectangle you just made and click "OK"

    NOW, THIS WINDOW APPEARS ==>

    Enter in the clearance value you desire (say 3x the thickness of the board)
    and now select the shapes to cut away from.  You can click and drag
    across your design.  You can also hold Select key and click on multiple
    shapes.  Make sure you don't select the "bound" shape.

    SELECT CUT SHAPES

     
     
     

    Your final result is here:

     
     

    You can edit the final shapes if there are slivers or small rectangles left over.
    You may want to add VIAS to these new copper shapes and solder them to
    the bottom ground plane.  Also, make sure you leave enough room to solder
    any connectors.

    Finally I recommend moving the (0,0) coordinate to the lower left
    of your layout (if only for the sake of good design practices).
    You can do this under Edit - Modify - Move Origin and click on the
    lower left corner of your "bound" shape.

    P.S. To clean up your schematic use F5 and click on a symbol
    to move the text labels out of the way so they are readable