I'm a software guy but I do an occasional PCB design as well. I'm doing a 2-sided 6" x 6" design now that will be sparsely populated (more connectors than anything else, something of a motherboard that will connect some digital modules). My questions are about copper pours.
1) What is the advantage, if any, of using a cross-hatched pour over a solid pour?
2) On a 2-sided design, is it better to pour a ground plane on both sides, or to pour ground on one side and Vcc on the other?
EDIT:
3) If you're planning to pour a ground plane, what do you do about routing the ground net? The issue here is that in the normal sequence, you'll route the board and presumably your ground net will be fairly wide traces, which take up room that other traces could use. Then you pour a ground plane which makes those wide traces irrelevant, at least on the side where the plane is, and it would have been better to make them thin or not route them at all. Is there a common approach to this inefficiency?