Newby - DRC red circles

[BenBarber]

Hi,

I am an absolute beginner with UltiBoard (Not to PCB routing though) and I have some basic questions.

1-I have red circles around pins that I have manually rounted.  I believe these are there because of DRC but I can not figure out how to get rid of them.  Actually since I am manually routing the board I would like ALL Design Rules turned off and red circles cleared.  Any suggestions?

2-When I am connecting an SMD part to the power or ground plane should I place a pad and do it that way or a VIA?

Thanks for the hand holding!

Ben

[Consultant Chris]

This looks to be because you do not have a net list. The netlist is generated from the schematic, so you won't have one if you are routing manually. Although you can edit the netlist manually, you can hide the design rule layer so that the design errors don't show. You'll probably still get a warning when you go to export the finished PCB, but you can ignore this so long as you have no other design errors.

In the final count it doesn't matter whether you route with a pad or a via, but convention says that you should use a via. If you switch layers using the shortcut key then a via is automatically created for you. Since you are using SMD parts, you should spend a whiledeciding how small you want your vias, as they rapidly become the largets roadblock for dense SMD layouts. I suggest using a via with a 0.4mm hole and a 0.7mm pad as most PCB manufacturers can make this, and you can easily stack the vias in a pattern which allows routing to each pin.

[kittmaster]

In the layer toolbox on the left under the layers tab. Uncheck the design rules check box twice and it will dump the red circles. You should never route a PCB without a schematic and netlist.

Vias or pad are up to the user. For any layer transition, if its its not noise sensative, I'd use the chip leg as a channel verse a via since vias add drilling costs to the design. But again this decision is a function of the circuit operation and the designers requirements.

[BenBarber]

Hi all,

Thanks so much for the information.  Turning the DRC layer off worked perfectly!  I also turned the Ratsnest layer off and that cleaned things up too.  I really appreciate the help.