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I’m looking for a clean, automatic way in Altium Designer to create a ground plane cutout directly under certain SMT components (e.g. AC-coupling capacitors on high-speed signals).
Example use case:
If a capacitor is placed on Top Layer, I want the adjacent internal GND plane (Layer 2) to be voided directly underneath it.
If the same component is flipped to Bottom Layer, I want the adjacent internal GND plane above it to be voided (e.g. Layer 9 in a 10-layer stackup).
Methods I’m already aware of:
What I’m trying to understand:
If anyone has experience with this, or can point me to the correct documentation or scripting examples, I’d really appreciate it.
Example use case:
If a capacitor is placed on Top Layer, I want the adjacent internal GND plane (Layer 2) to be voided directly underneath it.
If the same component is flipped to Bottom Layer, I want the adjacent internal GND plane above it to be voided (e.g. Layer 9 in a 10-layer stackup).
Methods I’m already aware of:
- Manually drawing polygon/plane cutouts under each part (Time consuming and can lead to missed cutouts)
- Adding plane keep outs directly in the footprint (Have to make another footprint copy)
What I’m trying to understand:
- Is there any rule-based method in Altium to do this automatically (e.g. clearance rules tied to component bodies or pads)?
- How easy this is to implement through Altium scripting and if there is any resources I could be directed to do this?
- Or is the footprint-level plane keep out approach the only robust solution?
If anyone has experience with this, or can point me to the correct documentation or scripting examples, I’d really appreciate it.
