So I’ve attached in the post a screenshot of the beginngings of my board layout in Eagle, but I have a quick question. What you see is an IC connector (through hole) and a custom part I designed (I’m new at this, so if it looks kinda funny…yeah).
So the pads look great, but I realized, they look like they are on TOP of the board. If I’m gonna solder my ICs on to these, the pads would need to be on the bottom so I can stick the IC pins through the board and then solder the pins to the pads. Am I correct thinking this and what would I do about it?
Also: The pads have those little black spots in the middle of them. Do they have holes built in?
Eagle has a library, named ref-packages that contains many component packages. It’ usually easier to just copy the package and use it to create your part. It’s also safer because it avoids many mistakes.
From the image I can’t understand if the pads are on the bottom, or on the top.
The software I use allows me to “flip” the board so that I can work on the underside. You might be able to the same with Eagle, so that you can check if the pads are on both sides (it depends on how the footprints were created).
You can always use a Gerber viewer, of course, to check your output files, or output them to a printer.
Eagle only has one Pads layer, they aren’t on the top OR the bottom.
If you print a layout or generate Gerber files, whether pads are included in the Top or Bottom layers depend on whether the Pads layer is visible or selected for inclusion into the particular Gerber output.
technically, you are right - a pads layer. However, eagle knows the pads have copper on both top and bottom. I think the pads layer is a convenience so you can get rid of the pads to see where traces go and find short air-wire segments.
Pads are on both the top and bottom. They get generated into the artwork for both layers. The black dots in the center are the drill holes. The diameter for the holes is defined (and can be changed) on the ‘package’ in the parts respective library.
I think people are confusing the on-screen image with the board structure. In an eagle brd, the pads layer is separate and distinct from top and bottom layers. By “generated into a layer’s artwork” I think you mean “generated into a gerber layer”. That takes explicit selection of the pad layer as part of the CAM process when creating a gerber (or what ever output you want). The black dots are actually the no copper areas of the pads. They don’t define “holes”. The holes come from the drill layer, 44, and not the holes layer, 45, and certainly not the pads layer, 17. And, yes, I get that the black areas are where the “holes” are but it’s not the same.
It is instructive to play around with the layers. open a brd and deselect all the layers. Then select a single layer, say pads, and see what it does. You will learn a lot about how eagle represents a board.
For making your own artwork for toner or photo transfer, you can ignore the drills layer and use the center of the pad as the drill target.
