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So I'm doing a board with a few components that have pads named TH (for "thermal", not "through-hole"). The pads are not connected to anything in the library device, and I haven't done anything special with them. One side of the board has a polygon named TH as well.

After using the autorouter, EAGLE gives me a bunch of airwires in places where it wasn't able to connect all the TH pads together. Now, I don't really care about that - is there a way of telling it not to do that? Just hooking them up to whatever part of the TH polygon is around would be fine for me, it doesn't all need to be connected.

bitsmack
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Chris
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  • I haven't used EAGLE in a while so I'm not going to write an answer, but I think the most _sane_ way is to hide the TH ratsnest. The thermal pads and copper can be rather important, datasheet often have specific layout recommendations. – pipe Sep 21 '16 at 20:54
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    Possible duplicate of [Hide particular airwires/nets in eagle](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/128293/hide-particular-airwires-nets-in-eagle) – pipe Sep 21 '16 at 20:54
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    Don't use autorouters – Voltage Spike Sep 21 '16 at 23:25
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    __This is not a duplicate!__ The OP should _not_ simply hide the airwires, but should instead take care of the problem. Please see my answer. – bitsmack Sep 22 '16 at 00:51
  • (_Actually, I won't have time to make a good answer for a day or two... sorry!_) – bitsmack Sep 22 '16 at 05:24
  • In the library definition, have you by any chance set the pins in the symbol to be of the `sup` type? – Tom Carpenter Dec 22 '16 at 16:20
  • As laptop2d said, don't use autorouters. 99.9% of the time they're more trouble than they're worth, and even when they work they're nowhere near as good as human intuition, even that of a newbie. As for your question, I would suggest not naming the thermal pads at all. if you absolutely must name them, call them TH_1, TH_2, etc to keep them on separate "nets". – DerStrom8 Mar 14 '17 at 18:28

2 Answers2

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Why is there a polygon called "TH"? I strongly suspect that if you named it something else, then Eagle CAD wouldn't try to connect all your other TH pads to it. Sounds rather like you shot yourself in the foot.

Richard Crowley
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  • The thing is that even if I remove the polygon, Eagle still insists on connecting all the TH pads together. Which would've made perfect sense if it was a ground plane or something like that, but in this case it'd be very nice to be able to turn that feature off. – Chris Sep 22 '16 at 06:22
  • You may have to go into the XML file and delete all references to "TH" and force it to re-think the whole situation. – Richard Crowley Sep 22 '16 at 13:10
  • I'll have a look at that. Another thought, would it be acceptable to connect the thermals to ground? That should pretty much solve the problem I'd think. Not sure if it has any consequences electrically though. – Chris Sep 22 '16 at 16:45
  • @Chris -- connection of Thermal pads to ground or not would depend on the part and manufacturer recommendation. Could you update the post with your component? – Wesley Lee Oct 22 '16 at 06:27
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pads named TH ... polygon named TH

You told it the pads and polygon are the same net, so of course Eagle will try to connect them. I don't understand how you expect this to work otherwise.

If you don't want them connected, then why why why would you give them the same net name!!?

Olin Lathrop
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