Electronic – PCB design, Ground plane and power plane issues

kicadmulti-layerpcb

This is the first time I am designing a 4 layer PCB. The circuit will work on multiple frequencies: Signal acquisition part works on few Hz to 200 Hz(max), but one portion of the circuit will generate 13.56MHz. Power supply is 3.3V from a Lipo battery. I am planning to stack the layers as follows:

  1. Signal

  2. Ground Plane

  3. Power Plane

  4. Signal

I am using KiCad. I have already created ground plane and power plane. I have connected the negative terminal of battery to the ground plane by via. The schematic has a lot of ICs which require ground. I am just connecting those pads to the ground plane by vias too.

My question is: Do I have to route the connections in ground plane layer(all of them together, I mean do I have to connect them together again in ground plane-2nd layer of my PCB) or will the vias from the IC pads (supposed to be connected to ground as schematics) to ground plane will do? My understanding is, ground plane is full of copper unless I route any signal through them.

Best Answer

In KiCad, to create a GND plane you have to use the "Add Filled Zones" button from the toolbar normally visible on the right side of the screen. Select the layer you want this zone to be at and draw your plane. You would usually want to cover the whole layer with this zone / GND plane.

After doing this, every normal GND via that you add it will automatically go through all layers and will automatically be connected to the GND plane as well. I mentioned normal via, since there are the blind and burried vias, which wouldn't necessary mean that they would be automatically connected to your GND vias.

In the end, you can anyway control if there is a connection or not. If your via is shown to have a thin white line attached to it, that seems to be connected to an IC GND pin or some other GND point on your board, then you know that the intended connection to the GND is not done.