-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueLevel Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
Embedded Design Techniques
Our expert contributors provide the knowledge this month that designers need to be aware of to make intelligent, educated decisions about embedded design. Many design and manufacturing hurdles can trip up designers who are new to this technology.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Enough Blame to Go Around
September 4, 2017 | Scott Decker, CID+, UTC Aerospace SystemsEstimated reading time: 2 minutes
The idea for this article began a few months ago when The PCB Design Magazine conducted a reader survey regarding the topic “Whose Fault is that Bad Board?” After some thought, I submitted my answers. After all, I must have some kind of input after over 25 years of PCB design. But still, whose fault is that bad board?
Most of a PCB designer’s job involves placing parts and routing traces on a CAD tool, and then whipping out a set of drawings and Gerber files to send to the fab shop. Some of you even draw the schematics and maybe even do some library work now and then. For me, I’ve done all of that and more over the course of my career. That doesn’t make me a great designer; it just says I’ve done a lot of different things, as I’m sure many of you have too. So when it comes to problems with PCBs, just who is really at fault, and what do you do about it when you have issues, big or small?
As designers, we are typically detail-oriented and most likely perfectionists when it comes to our design work. I’ll admit it: I could clean up routing for days, but I limit myself to an hour or so per layer, as hard as that is for me sometimes. Unless it’s in-our-face obvious, when we try to decipher what happened when we have issues with a board, we tend to look someplace else.
OK, I know what you’re thinking: Don’t go there. We designers make mistakes too. Some of the things I’ve learned along the way came from making mistakes, and as we all know, that’s how you learn. As an example, and I have lots to choose from, once in my early days of design, the drawing checker asked if I could remove the leading zeros from dimensions under one inch. I thought about it. I really didn’t want to do this, because the zeroes are interactive with things on the board. His reply was that if I could possibly do so, then take the leading zeroes off any dimensions under one inch.
Against my better judgement, I did it anyway, and not more than a couple of weeks later, I get a call from the fab shop. It seems they started routing into one of the boards in a six-up panel. After I did a little investigating, I remembered that I changed the frame outline a bit and, you guessed it, the dimension didn’t update. Once I got the panel from the shop, I proudly took it up to the checker and exclaimed, “See, this is what happens when you override a dimension!” His answer was, “I just said to remove them if you could, not that you had to.” So, whose fault was that? His for requesting that I remove them, mine for doing it when I knew I shouldn’t, or me for not remembering I did it or maybe not providing a compelling reason not to? After that, I had a good reason for leaving the leading zeroes alone, no matter what the dimensions are. Lesson learned.
To read this entire article, which appeared in the August 2017 issue of The PCB Design Magazine, click here.
Suggested Items
Cadence, TSMC Collaborate on Wide-Ranging Innovations to Transform System and Semiconductor Design
04/25/2024 | Cadence Design SystemsCadence Design Systems, Inc. and TSMC have extended their longstanding collaboration by announcing a broad range of innovative technology advancements to accelerate design, including developments ranging from 3D-IC and advanced process nodes to design IP and photonics.
Ansys, TSMC Enable a Multiphysics Platform for Optics and Photonics, Addressing Needs of AI, HPC Silicon Systems
04/25/2024 | PRNewswireAnsys announced a collaboration with TSMC on multiphysics software for TSMC's Compact Universal Photonic Engines (COUPE). COUPE is a cutting-edge Silicon Photonics (SiPh) integration system and Co-Packaged Optics platform that mitigates coupling loss while significantly accelerating chip-to-chip and machine-to-machine communication.
Siemens’ Breakthrough Veloce CS Transforms Emulation and Prototyping with Three Novel Products
04/24/2024 | Siemens Digital Industries SoftwareSiemens Digital Industries Software launched the Veloce™ CS hardware-assisted verification and validation system. In a first for the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industry, Veloce CS incorporates hardware emulation, enterprise prototyping and software prototyping and is built on two highly advanced integrated circuits (ICs) – Siemens’ new, purpose-built Crystal accelerator chip for emulation and the AMD Versal™ Premium VP1902 FPGA adaptive SoC (System-on-a-chip) for enterprise and software prototyping.
Listen Up! The Intricacies of PCB Drilling Detailed in New Podcast Episode
04/25/2024 | I-Connect007In episode 5 of the podcast series, On the Line With: Designing for Reality, Nolan Johnson and Matt Stevenson continue down the manufacturing process, this time focusing on the post-lamination drilling process for PCBs. Matt and Nolan delve into the intricacies of the PCB drilling process, highlighting the importance of hole quality, drill parameters, and design optimization to ensure smooth manufacturing. The conversation covers topics such as drill bit sizes, aspect ratios, vias, challenges in drilling, and ways to enhance efficiency in the drilling department.
Elevating PCB Design Engineering With IPC Programs
04/24/2024 | Cory Blaylock, IPCIn a monumental stride for the electronics manufacturing industry, IPC has successfully championed the recognition of the PCB Design Engineer as an official occupation by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). This pivotal achievement not only underscores the critical role of PCB design engineers within the technology landscape, but also marks the beginning of a transformative journey toward nurturing a robust, skilled workforce ready to propel our industry into the future.