My Top 10 PCB Design Tips

[Music] pcb design tutorials on pcb way where you can submit a pcb design related tutorial and get rewarded it can be a video or a written article about pcb design tips and tricks or your process in any language you like each published submission will get you 50 to 100 dollars in coupons and 500 pcb waivings with a chance to win up to 800 in cash and 2 000 beans so what are you waiting for oh yeah right you're waiting for this video of course by no means am i an expert in pcb design however i have learned some tips and tricks over the years and i'd like to share them with you so here are 10 tips to help you improve your designs number one using reference designs datasheets for example feature typical application section this is usually a good starting point also open source designs if somebody else already designed something that works use that for me that is the exact reason of open source development boards nearly all development boards have their schematics and designs available if you've used the development board for breadboarding use the parts of the design that you need number two working in blocks and by that i mean components that go together before placing your components on the board try to arrange the parts that belong together first and then move the whole block also moving components that need to be in a specific place first for some components placement doesn't have to be precise something like a usb connector may need to be in a specific place so move that first number three move rotate and repeat and then again try to find the easiest route to layout most of the time this means moving rotating components multiple times until you find the easiest way to route them it's kind of like a sliding number puzzle try to keep traces short ideally you would be able to route traces straightforward without having unnecessary long routes and layer switches number four route important traces first route traces that are sensitive to noise first think about usb hdmi i squared c or other data lines basically traces that may be affected by a layer change length and neighboring traces number five use a trace width calculator when a trace is going to carry a decent amount of current make sure it can handle it using a trace width calculator you can find the minimum width for your specific use make sure to select the right copper weight of your board and for two layer boards use the width given for external layers in the air and also make sure to scale up your fires number six net labels all nets have a label this is how the dsc knows if everything is as outshoot but net labels that you can read and understand are very powerful giving it a name that makes sense to me is a good idea number seven printing on paper if you already have the components print the layout on paper on a one-to-one scale and check that the components actually match the footprint you are using it can also help with component spacing because you can easily lose sense of scale when you are in your eda having a physical reference can help you see if there's actually enough room between components if you are for example designing your board to have two usb thumb drives next to each other it's worth the time checking if that is actually physically possible number eight including extra footprint for example if you are unsure if a line needs a pull up or pull down in your design it won't cost you anything extra just to put both footprints on your pcb and only populate the one you need or maybe you want some indicator led but you're not sure if you're going to use it put it there anyway another thing is extra filtering capacitors if you discover during testing that for example your power supply is noisier than you expected adding an extra capacitor can be a hassle if you don't have the room for it so why not add some extra decoupling footprints just in case if you have room for it include test points for all signals you might want to debug later trying to probe a pin of a small ic is a hassle a test point is a lot easier and also it's more reliable the 3d viewer during the initial layout phase of my design i regularly switch between layout view and the 3d viewer it gives me an idea of where things are in space and if the layer i want makes sense it also reminds me that although i'm designing in 2d space the final product is going to be in 3d space number 10 use the drc no seriously use it the dse design rules check lets you know if you have made any mistakes during routing for example if traces are too close to each other vias are too close to pads or traces if you have unconnected traces or wrongly connected traces you can also set the dlc up that it will flag if you do not meet your pcb manufacturers specification when you do not meet these specifications your board will at best cost you more but even worse they will contact you saying that they can't manufacture your board so go to the capabilities page of your manufacturer and look up things like minimum trace width fire drill size and via annual ring size these things helped me a lot when i started out but of course there are much more tips and tricks for all skill levels so be sure to leave your tip in the comment section below or even better upload them to pcb way thanks for watching and i'll see you next time bye you

Channel: Dustin Watts

Views: 5,289

Keywords: PCB, Design, tutorial, tips, tricks, improve, learn, help

Id: kkc8BxL5Eo0

Length: 6min 52sec (412 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021