Power trace sizes/autorouter

Eagle newbie here:

I am trying to design boards with the power and ground traces a little larger than the signal traces. I can change the trace sizes and route them by hand, or I can leave them the standard size, run the autorouter, then make the power traces larger, run the design rules bot, go back and fix the inevitable errors.

I have to believe that there is a way to say “These traces need to be this size”, and then run the autorouter to route them with that setting. I suppose alternatively I could figure out how to make ALL of the traces wider, and just live with that, but it seems silly, and I’m pretty certain that people who know what they’re doing have a different way of doing it.

So is there a way to indicate that some of the traces need to be wider, and then still use the autorouter?

Yes there is. In Eagle, you can define Net Classes and specify which signals in your schematic belongs to which class. For example you may have a class called signal with a width of 10 mils and a class called power with a width of 24 mils. When you autoroute the board, the traces should conform to the widths you specified for each class.

To define the classes, click Edit > Net Classes. You should see a dialog window with one default class appropriately called “default” with a trace width of 0 mils. You can add more classes here such as a power class with the width of your choosing. All you have to do to create a new class is to type a class name in the text box. And specify the width.

When you have created all the classes you need, change the signals in the schematic by clicking “CHANGE” (Wrench Icon) > Class. Then select the class you want to set for the signal. Then select all the signals in the schematic that you want to set to the class.

I hope this helps.

Ah, I see. Yes, that helps a lot. That’s going to save me a lot of wasted time and effort.

Thank you.

Edit: tried it. Whew, that sure makes it easy. 100% improvement.