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Arduino MEGA Shield Project
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rlbrinkman 5 years ago
Greetings, I need the team's advice to know if I am on the right track to designing an Arduino MEGA "shield", or if the approach I've used will yield a useless result.  Is there a better, more sensible approach? I am designing an Arduino MEGA "shield" - the PCB is populated with modules and components on the TOP side, and Male Header pins are populated on the BOTTOM side of the PCB, into which the Arduino MEGA plugs. * The top side works fine; you just place components per usual. * ~~In order to place the Arduino MEGA on the bottom side of the PCB it needs to be placed "upside down" from the perspective that EasyEDA normally takes.~~  When EasyEDA places a component on the bottom side the component is automatically Flipped, expecting that the bottom side of the component will be mounted to the bottom side of the PCB.  In the case of a "shield" I need to mount the top side of the component (Arduino Mega) to the bottom side of the PCB.  In order to accomplish this the PCB Layout of the Arduino MEGA needs to be Flipped in the 'X' direction.  Otherwise all the pins/connections are backwards and the Arduino MEGA will not fit.  Unfortunately, EasyEDA does not support Flipping of PCB components. So, what I am doing is telling EasyEDA that I am leaving the Arduino MEGA on the TOP side of the PCB.  This places all the pins in the correct locations and orientation; the male headers, when later added to the BOTTOM side, will plug right into the Arduino MEGA.  However, all the other modules and components are ALSO on the TOP side, so they are all superimposed on top of the Arduino MEGA. ~~As you can imagine, this creates lots of DRC errors.  This means that I will not be able to benefit from the automated DRC checks - I will have to carefully check everything manually, hoping that I don't overlook something~~ (this turned out not to be the case; error checking works great!).  ~~In order to help with this~~ I have created a Layout Prototype using a PCB Breadboard to check that everything fits.  BTW, I have also "stacked" a couple of things on the TOP side of the PCB - but I am less concerned about these, as they are much simpler to check. Here is a picture of what I've described - hopefully this helps visualize the approach: ![Arduino MEGA Shield Project.jpg](//image.easyeda.com/pullimage/vUyEGD4x2v3B1ALCqvdJ9B0aulKsSQgdkRY8Yl8o.jpeg) Here's the segment of the PCB showing the messy result of the superimposed modules/components/Arduino MEGA: ![Arduino MEGA Shield PCB.jpg](//image.easyeda.com/pullimage/bXC8fytDfvI8lTUkWfAs4NSGo8oT5aAtEL3LZbUe.jpeg) What say you all? Best Regards, Ron Brinkman BTW - I Love, Love, Love EasyEDA.  It's unbelievably capable.
Comments
MikeDB 5 years ago
EasyEDA does support flipping of components - I do it all the time.  Just select the component and change TopLayer in top right corner to BottomLayer
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rlbrinkman 5 years ago
You're correct MikeDB.  I didn't state the issue clearly (I've now updated the original message to clarify). EasyEDA does automatically flip components when they are placed on the bottom side of the PCB.  In the case of the "shield", however, it's the top side of the component that I need to mount to the PCB's bottom side.  Therefore, I need to flip the component (Arduino MEGA) back to its original orientation, essentially undoing the automatic flip that EasyEDA does. EasyEDA supports flipping of Schematic symbols, but not flipping of PCB components (except for the aforementioned automatic flip).
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andyfierman 5 years ago
@rlbrinkman, The shield is connected using through hole pin headers so the outline and the pinout is the same if it's mounted on the top of the PCB or - unflipped - on the bottom. You could clone the footprint for the shield and save it with a suffix of something like "\_unflipped\_bottom\_layer\_mounted"\. Then swap the everything on the **top silkscreen layer** on the cloned copy to the **bottom** **silkscreen layer**. * This may be a bit tedious to do since the text elements will flip but the outline will simply drop to the bottom silkscreen without flipping. It may also be time consuming because more complex silkscreen elements may not allow you to do a multiple select and edit the common "layer" attribute nicely. Then save it. When you call the new footprint into the PCB the silkscreen will appear on the bottom of the PCB but the outline and the pinout will be in the same orientation as if it was on the top.
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