Eagle trace width and net classes

Community PCB Design
1

Hi,

I’m able to setup different net classes in eagle then assign them to my nets so that I can have traces that are wide and support a few amps and also narrow traces that just handle logic.

My question is, how do I connect two nets so that they use different net classes? E.g. I have a battery connector that needs to handle a couple amps when it runs through the MOSFET for my motor controller. I also need to connect the battery to the voltage regulator to supply power to the rest of the board. I don’t need a thick trace for the connection to the regulator but they both connect to my BATT_V net.

Should I use a jumper or something so that I can connect nets with two different names (e.g. BOARD_V and MOTOR_V) that both connect to BATT_V ? When I connect them Eagle changes the name of the other net.

Is there some other better way to acheive this in Eagle?

Thanks!

2

Good question. Honestly though I think the simplest solution is just to manually route the traces that have special requirements or better yet just manually route the whole board. In the past I have spent countless hours trying to setup the auto-router just right when I could have routed the whole board by hand in half the time.

3

I hear you on the autorouter but I like to use it. I just used the NC solder jumper in the Sparkfun library and connected each side of the net to that. Works fine. The only drawback is space for that on the board.