'William Chops" Westfield ' Trying to keep the PCB single-sided, is star-shaped gnd/power made of > jumper wires any better? I would start the routing by connecting all the PIC grounds together and keeping the connections from the power pins thru the bypass caps back to th= e ground short. The same goes for the crytal connections and crystal cap grounds. Then you route everything else. That may require a jumper or two, no big deal. If you're already going to solder 20 parts to the board, does it really matter much if you now have to solder 22 and two of them are wires? Remember that jumpers don't always need to be thru hole. Thru hole jumpers have the advantage they can be any length and orientation and can jump over lots of stuff. Sometimes that's useful. However, sometimes you can get away with 0 Ohm surface mount jumpers if you only need to jump over a singl= e trace. This is where using a large surface mount size like 1206 may help i= f you're making the board yourself. ******************************************************************** Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .