If its a home made board there is no reason why you can't just
    solder top and bottom of the ICs

Well, sockets make this nearly impossible, for instance.  Other components
are inherently difficult to solder on both sides (relays and displays are
particularly nasty...)


    Otherwise, if you insist on NOT allowing EAGLE to route to ONLY
    the ICs, then you can draw a polygon around the IC pads on the
    trestrict (I think) layer.

That's correct.  This is actually a real PITA.  If you draw a large
rectangle around the DIP, it will prevent the autorouter from routing
topside traces between the pins or under the DIP, which would be desirable.
You can put polygons on each pin, but that takes a while and the DRC will
complain about the top-level PADS being in tRestrict.  Apparently the
correct solution is to draw a small rectangle using "wires" in tRestrict
around each pin.  Grr..

IMO, it better to route (automatically or manually) everything you can (and
hopefully all of your "troublesome" pins) on the bottom layer, and then
route (probably manually) the remaining connection on the top layer, more
or less as if you were doing a single-sided board with jumpers.  (But this
in turn results in a board that is a bit "weird" should you get it
professionally manufactured - I understand from a previous discussion that
it's "nice" if there's an equal area of traces on each side of the board.)

BillW

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