laying out my own pcb for the modella desktop miller Eagle 6.1.

[amateur_25]

Hi I'm going to Fab Lab Manchester to use their desktop miller to mill my pcb. The technician there forwarded on a tutorial he used when he used it.

It says

To layout the board, you first place the parts and then place the routes to connect the parts. You want to place the parts so that you minimize the crossovers between the yellow ratnest lines. Before you start routing, you should hit the Change button and adjust your trace width to .012. Also, you should change the grid spacing (View -> Grid) to Finest.

So does that mean I should click on the finest button next to the size and not the one at the bottom? What is the Alt setting for?

[free_electron]

sorry, crystal ball is broken.. What layout software are you using ?

[amateur_25]

oh crap very sorry for wasting ppl valuable time! I'm using Eagle 6.

[LEECH666]

I think you should read Dave Jones exellent tutorial on PCB design first, and then a genereal Eagle (video) tutorial.

http://www.alternatezone.com/electronics/files/PCBDesignTutorialRevA.pdf

For very small projects it may be ok to just place the parts on the board without using a corresponding schematic file, however I advise you to do it the right way from the start. That means you draw a schematic first, if you haven't done that already.

Then while you route your board you should take the minimum trace widths your milling machine can handle into consideration.

The alt grid setting lets you easily switch between the default grid and the alt gird.
The alt grid gets activated when you push down the alt-key on your keyboard.

Cheers from Germany,
Florian

Cheers,
Florian