I want to create a compound part that consists of a couple of regular connectors (with holes) and copper traces connecting these. The topology but requires to use a second layer to have all connections without crossing, so a few connections need to be done on the backside of the PCB.
As far as I understood it, the “copper1” group has all copper traces on the upper side, where as “copper0” is the backside. But since copper0 needs to be part of the copper1 group as well, I so far see no way to add copper traces to the copper0 group only.
If I got that right - is there a way at all to fulfill my requirement?
I of cause can add the traces again and again in the routing phase, but that sounds somewhat silly with dozens of identical compounds.
Yes it is possible to do this by using an old form (so far still supported, although it may not always be) of separate copper0 and copper1 layers. It is somewhat of a pain to do (at least in Inkscape) because there need to be two pads with the same id (which Inkscape won’t allow.) This howto explains what you need to do with a couple of parts as examples.
It isn’t something that it is very common to want to do. It is only possible now because of backward compatibility with older versions of Fritzing (and thus the warning that at some point it may stop working!)
The thing I am about to build is a sensor array using the PCB as a backplane. 8 contacts need to be wired across plus a RGB LED and capacitor sitting in the middle of all. Oh, and 4 fastening holes need to be at their proper spots, blocking even more space from being used for traces. Fun times…
