Protel 99SE - autoroute all except GND net?

[Circlotron]

I want to autoroute an entire board except the ground net, then pour a ground polygon. I can't seem to find a way to exclude the ground net from the autorouter. Any ideas?

[tautech]

Route just the ground net leaving appropriate spacings to then Autoroute all the other nets.
Then do your polygon ground pour.

[Circlotron]

That kinda worked, but when I autorouted the other nets it disturbed the positions of the ground tracks. What I want to do is give the other tracks the greatest freedom of placement without any ground tracks present.

[tautech]

Been a while since I’ve used 99SE but can’t you lock a net once routed ?
Lock Primatives ?
Or turn OFF Shove ?

[Circlotron]

I found a way that partially works. Pour the ground polygon first, then autoroute the other stuff. Then regenerate the polygon. For the most part it sees the ground points are all connected to the polygon so it leaves them alone, but in a number of places it still puts tracks from one ground pad to another despite these pads beeing connected to the polygon.

[tautech]

Tweaking the layout should fix that.

[Circlotron]

^^ Those unnecessary tracks were bottom side tracks. The topside ones I couldn't see because of the topside polygon. So the basic problem still exists - the ground tracks running all over the place take up lots of space when they don't need to be there, and make the signal routes messy for no good reason.

[tautech]

You should be able to turn OFF layers so to better see what’s going on.

IIRC for my first board with a pour I’d routed the ground then poured over it.