How to Create Inverted Silkscreen in Cadsoft Eagle

If you’re one of EAGLE CAD fans, and you were wondering how some boards like Arduino boards have what’s called a negative silkscreen, hollow rectangles or shapes by text or logo, then you will learn how to do it with Ishaan’s video tutorial.

Ishaan used a ULP called “negasilk.ulp” in his tutorial. It is written by Christian Bohrer, and it can be downloaded here.

We’ve tested  this trick in ElectronicsLab using these steps:

1. Adding some texts on layer 41tRestrict.
2. Drawing a rectangular polygon in 1Top layer with width 8 mil (according to Ishaan, this ULP accepts only this width), and don’t forget to hit ratsnest.
3. Run negasilk.ulp.
4. A script file is generated in the same directory of your .brd file, open it and make the following modification using any text editor (adding layer 21 line).
   Set Wire_Bend 2;
   LAYER 21;
   GRID MM;
5. Finally, delete the unwanted polygon and text from layer 41 and layer 1.

You can see these steps in the following GIF(click to view):

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