| | | | Introduction and Table of Contents
|
---|
| | | | This document gives some information about designing
printed circuit boards. The procedures outlined
here are for general use, double sided printed
circuit boards that any board shop should be able to make. It is not
intended to tell you anything about other kinds of board designs -- there
are just too many different technologies out there to cover in one document.
It also is not intended to cover "home-brew" manufacturing, since every
setup is different and line widths and spacing are very dependent on the
manufacturing process. |
| | | | A PCB Designer is a person that enjoys puzzles,
especially graphic puzzles such as mazes. You should work well with stress
and time limitations, especially since the time allocated for the physical
layout of a PCB is often eaten up by circuit design and parts selection. You
have to be a person who can work well with people, since much of the success
of a design can hinge on exchange of information between the PCB designer,
the circuit designer, manufacturing technologists, and others. You have to
be a self-starter, since you will often have to get information for yourself.
You should know electronics, although many professional designers started as
mechanical drafters. Above all, a PCB designer should be detail oriented,
and must be able to think creatively, but in a logical fashion. PCB design
is not only a techical skill, it is also an artistic one, where the ability
to creatively solve problems is important. |
| | | | I would strongly suggest purchasing a copy of the
Design Standard for Rigid Printed Boards and Rigid Printed Board
Assemblies, IPC-D-275, from the IPC
if you are considering designing boards commercially. The standard contains
much more information about board design than could be covered here. This
information is necessary to do a good job with more complex PCB designs.
The IPC also has many other standards for design, test, and manufacturing of
PCBs and other packaging methods. |
| | | | This document assumes an Electronic Computer-Aided
Design (ECAD) program will be used to design the PCB. Using ECAD takes more
time up front for setup and preparation than the old method of using colored
tape and die-cut adhesive pads. ECAD offers many benefits to justify this
extra time, such as accuracy, easier checking, more compact and error-free
storage, and faster modification of existing designs. An ECAD program is
not the same as a general-purpose mechanical design program, although there
are extensions to some mechanical CAD packages to allow them to be used for
ECAD applications. It is beyond the scope of this document to help in the
selection of a specific ECAD program, general procedures are explained that
should be adaptable to any of them. The actual selection process is a
matter of comparing the features of the programs and making a choice based
on the features you find important. There are links
to a number of ECAD vendors elsewhere in this site.
|