In an attempt to keep my ground planes as large as possible, I keep my isolate set to the minimum that I can get away with (7 mil for GP). However, for parts that have large holes, the soldermask keep-out is generally larger than the isolate I have set up (see the picture [here).
In the picture, you can see that the ground plane is inside the keep out hashing lines for the hole. This causes there to be exposed ground plane just outside the pad for the hole, because the keep out eliminates the soldermask inside it, but not the ground plane. While this doesn’t really create any particular problems, it is really easy to get solder bridges from the pad out to the exposed ground plane. It’s also not really pretty to look at on a real board. :x
So does anyone know if there’s an easy way to have the keep out for the hole act on both the soldermask layer and the ground plane polygon? I would rather not have to put a separate polygon around just these holes or change the isolate on my main ground planes if I don’t have to.](http://www.diyembedded.com/images/bad_soldermask.gif)