How to Make Your PCB Design Look Better -2

(4) The more you think about others, the less your own work.

When doing PCB design, try to consider the needs of some end users as much as possible. For example, if you are designing a development board, you should consider placing more silk screen information when designing the PCB. This will make it more convenient when you use it. It will not be used to retrieve schematics or seek support from designers. If the design is a mass production product, then more consideration should be given to the problems encountered on the production line. Devices of the same type should have the same direction as possible, whether the device spacing is appropriate, the process edge width of the board, and so on. The earlier these issues are considered, the less they will affect the subsequent design, and the workload of subsequent support and the number of board changes can also be reduced. It seems that the time it takes to start the design has increased, but in fact it has reduced the amount of follow-up work. When the board space signal permits, try to place more test points to improve the testability of the board, so that it can also save more time in the subsequent debugging stage and provide more ideas for finding problems.

(5) Try Simulation

Simulation is often something that PCB design engineers are unwilling to do. Some people may say that even if I simulate, the actual PCB produced will be different from the simulation results. Why should I waste time doing simulations? Doesn’t the boards I make without simulation work well? Right? This idea is very helpless. No problem with the design once or twice does not mean that there will be no problems in the future. Although the simulation results are different from the actual results, the simulation can show the correct trend of change, and we can make our own judgments based on the trend. There may be difficulties at the beginning, and it is normal for the simulation model to be confused about the simulation parameters. Just start, do it slowly, and accumulate slowly, and you will realize the importance of simulation. Before the completion of the board, determine the location of the problem in advance, and solve it in advance to avoid the occurrence of the problem. If you do too much simulation, you will fundamentally understand the cause of the problem, and it will also be of great help to the improvement of your design ability.

(6) Details Determine Success or Failure

PCB design is a meticulous work, all it takes is carefulness and patience. The mistakes made by novices who are just starting to design are some detailed mistakes. The device pin is wrong, the device package is used wrong, the pin sequence is reversed, etc. Some can be solved by flying leads, and some may make a board directly become a waste. When drawing the package, check it again, and compare the package with the actual device before putting it on the board. Take a look at it. Checking it again is not obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is just to avoid these low-level mistakes that are easy to make as much as possible. Otherwise, no matter how good the design is, the board is covered with flying lines, and it is far from excellent.

In actual work, if you can pay attention to the problems mentioned above and develop a good working habit in your work, I believe that with the gradual improvement of personal ability, more and better designs will be completed.

XPCB Limited is a manufacturer specializing in the production of high-precision double-sided, multi-layer and impedance, blind buried vias, and thick copper circuit boards. The products cover HDI, thick copper, backplanes, rigid-flex combined, buried capacitance and buried resistance, Golden Finger and other kinds of circuit boards, which can meet the needs of customers for all kinds of products.