Autorouter not connecting to copper area on inner layer

[m22oswald]

I have made a copper area on an inner plane that covers about half of a circuit board.  I've connected the copper area to the GND net.  When I manually drop a via over the copper area and connect the via to a GND pin, the thermal relief appears so I think the copper area is set up properly.

When I run the autorouter, it does not want to connect to the copper area.  There are quite a few components sitting directly over the copper area, and there shouldn't be a problem dropping a via beside a pad to make the GND connection.  Yet instead the autorouter tries to connect all the pads on the top layer via traces - not a single via to the copper area.

I also tried getting rid of the copper area and just making the entire thing a ground plane, and still had a lot of problems. Is there a setting that I have missed?  In the netlist editor the GND net topology is set to Shortest.  I can't think of what else to do.

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[David22JRA]

Hello m22oswald

Actually that is happening because we need to select the area that we won’t connect a component. That is possible with restrict parts net placement to a specific area in group editor Place>>Keep-in/Keep-out area.

Regards

[m22oswald]

Thank you for the reply.  The copper area is acting like a keep-out, even though I haven't specified it as such.  And if I create a keep-in area over the copper, then the rest of the layer won't be routed.  I want the entire layer to be used for routing - copper area and not-copper-area.  For some reason the autorouter is ignoring my copper area.

[David22JRA]

Hello m22oswald

That is weird. Have you tried to use another computer just to try the same or create another project, just to see if that works?

Regards