All the autorouters available for Easy-PC understand power planes, but a frequent question is how to manage autorouting when a split power plane is required. Obviously this requires separate copper pour areas for each part of the plane, but how can this be autorouted?

The answer is surprisingly simple. The autorouters can manage this, but two preconditions are required. The copper pour areas must be defined, but must not be poured, and each of them must be associated with a net.

This is easy to do. Either right click on each copper pour area to open the properties, then choose the appropriate net from the pull down list, or temporarily pour each copper area, defining the net as you do so, then immediately clear the copper. The net name will be retained.

After routing, connections will remain for those places where the pour will replace tracking.  After routing and pouring the copper, [Tools], [Optimise Nets], [All Nets] can be used to remove any redundant connections.  Any remaining connections will need to be investigated.