Altium PCB adds balanced copper/stealing copper method (still simple and crude)

Nubility

Altium PCB adds balanced copper/stealing copper method (still simple and crude) [Copy link]

The board I drew recently encountered the problem of insufficient residual copper rate of PCB. The general idea is to use the method of copper cladding on the whole board to fill the empty area, but this will bring a lot of broken copper, especially if there are components on the surface. Copper cladding will produce more broken copper, but not cladding will lead to low residual copper rate. The board manufacturer said that too low residual copper rate will lead to unbalanced current during electroplating of the outer layer of PCB, resulting in uneven copper foil thickness. Too low residual copper rate in the inner layer will affect the lamination effect of multi-layer PCB. At this time, there is another solution, which is to use balanced copper, similar to the PCB below. Balanced copper is the small square copper skin on the surface that fills the blank area.

I saw someone online saying that Cadence and PADS Professional provide the function of creating a copper thief, but AD was not mentioned, which made me feel a little unhappy. AD officials have proposed a method to create a copper thief, but the steps are quite complicated. In fact, there is an extremely simple and crude method to create a copper thief.

AD creates a balanced copper method:

1. First, create a new net on the PCB, which can be temporarily named "Balanced Copper" (to assist the subsequent DRC check)

2. Create a Fill (or free pad, region), and modify its network to the "balanced copper" just created

3. Turn off all online DRC options (to prevent DRC from being triggered during operation, causing lag), then copy the Fill, and then use special paste with network and X/Y array paste to paste the Fill into an array with an area equivalent to the PCB

4. Select all the newly pasted Fills, move the array to the PCB, and then start the DRC check. You only need to check the spacing rules and change the DRC quantity limit to 100,000.

You can see many DRC errors

5. Open views -> panels -> PCB rule and violation tab, and you will see a lot of DRC information. Then jump to the filter, select only FIlls, and then select all the DRC information below, and all the elements that generate DRC will be masked. Select fills directly on the board, delete directly, OK.

Then delete the copper block outside the PCB frame:

秦天qintian0303

It is better to cover the copper over a large area if the area is relatively large. This kind of copper is broken one by one.

Nubility

Qintianqintian0303 posted on 2023-7-25 11:18 It is better to cover a large area with copper if the area is relatively large. This kind of copper is broken one by one

It depends on the situation. In some cases, there will be a lot of scattered copper fragments in the whole board, which will cause EMC problems. In this case, use square copper array

秦天qintian0303

Nubility posted on 2023-7-25 18:32 It depends on the situation. In some cases, there will be a lot of scattered copper fragments on the whole board, which will cause EMC problems. In this case, use square copper array

I have learned that the boards I usually draw are relatively simple. Generally, the whole board is covered with copper, and then the broken copper is connected through vias.

Ejack1979

If you are worried that the copper cover is too fragmented, you can avoid this by setting rules, such as increasing the distance between the copper cover and the electrical object, or deleting dead copper with an area smaller than the specified value.

Why do you insist that copper pouring will cause EMC problems? If copper pouring does not help EMC and only causes harm, it means that the grounding design of the system is poor and the copper pouring is not connected to the appropriate reference plane.

Nubility

Ejack1979 posted on 2023-7-28 13:54 If you are worried that the copper is too sparse, you can avoid it by setting rules, such as increasing the distance between the copper and the electrical object, or deleting the dead area that is smaller than the specified value...

Rules are useless for this kind of problem.

Nubility

Ejack1979 posted on 2023-7-28 13:54 If you are worried that the copper is too sparse, you can avoid it by setting rules, such as increasing the distance between the copper and the electrical object, or deleting the dead area that is smaller than the specified value...

How can I avoid this situation with rules? I can't think of any rules that can solve this problem.