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Make Sure the PCB Layout Software You Use has All the Tools You Need Make Sure the PCB Layout Software You Use has All the Tools You Need When I was learning to fly part of my training included a long cross-country trip to practice the fine art of aerial navigation. Being a student pilot I, unfortunately, got a little lost, and before I got myself headed in the right direction again it was much later in the day than it should have been. Here I was; a student pilot that was lost flying an airplane and it was getting dark. I have never felt so alone in all of my life. Since I’m Read Article
Project Release Management within PCB Design Software Project Release Management within PCB Design Software You’ve worked night and day to get your PCB design done and finally, the last trace has been connected, the last silkscreen reference has been tweaked, and the final DRC has passed. It’s time to call it a weekend, right? Wrong. You’ve still got a boatload of work to do to get all of your output files created for your manufacturers. A lot of PCB release design tool vendors provide different mechanisms for making the creation of output files easier Read Article
SPICE Simulator Online Adaptation to Your Expertise SPICE Simulator Online Adaptation to Your Expertise Some of us have a habit of trying to be experts at everything. The one thing I have had to learn time and again, whether in software or hardware, is that there is no need to constantly reinvent the wheel. When you need to get an idea of how your device operates, you don’t need to build a simulation program from scratch. Thankfully, there are a number of tools that make it easy to simulate the behavior of your circuit, and you don’t need to be an Read Article
Manufacturing and Online Gerber Viewers: Manufacturing with Browser Based Design Manufacturing and Online Gerber Viewers: Manufacturing with Browser Based Design Watching your design come together in a layout program is hugely satisfying. But when it comes to manufacturing, preparing your designs for fabrication is a different beast. If you don’t have a ton of experience in this area, compiling information that fabricators need to build your device may seem tedious and unnecessary. You might be wondering, “why can’t my manufacturer just look at my CAD files and figure it out themselves?” While they Read Article
Free Bill of Materials Software vs. Integrated Design Software Free Bill of Materials Software vs. Integrated Design Software The first time I prepared functional requirements for a web platform, I thought the document was massively complex. I forget the number of youtube tutorials I watched on preparing this document. Now that I have prepared several of these documents for a number of startups, I could probably write functional requirements in my sleep. A bill of materials might also seem like a complex document if you have never prepared one in the past. When it comes Read Article
When Should You Use an Online Circuit Calculator? When Should You Use an Online Circuit Calculator? Even if you’re an experienced engineer, you probably haven’t perfectly memorized every single formula you need to design PCBs and electronic devices. If this is true for experienced engineers, then what is a weekend warrior to do? Thankfully, there are many online calculators available that can help even novice designers build devices that meet industry standards. As you venture down the rabbit hole of designing a new electronic product, it Read Article
Don’t Let Unmanageable Tools Deny You the Joy of Designing a PCB Don’t Let Unmanageable Tools Deny You the Joy of Designing a PCB There are a lot of “firsts” in our lives; the first time we drove alone after getting our driver’s license, going out on our first real date, buying our first home. These moments, and millions of others like them, are supposed to bring a feeling of joy when we remember them. Another moment of joy for me was the first PCB design that I worked on. I remember routing traces on a design that a co-worker opened up for me the first time I sat in front Read Article
Low Power Electronics: Do You Need a Battery to Keep Your Circuit Boards Online? Low Power Electronics: Do You Need a Battery to Keep Your Circuit Boards Online? I was recently chatting with a friend of mine about his new hardware startup and how his progress on his new product was coming along. He was building a Bluetooth device and his first run at a prototype only kept his circuit board online for 40 minutes before draining the battery. I’ve noticed the difficulty of many IoT devices is that often they need to run for long periods of time. Whether it’s something you can wear or a sensor in a smart home Read Article
Online PCB Printing: What to Know With Small or Large PCB Services Online PCB Fabrication: What to Know About Small or Large PCB Printing Services If you’re like any designer, you’ve probably spent more time than necessary trying to hammer out all the kinks of your printed circuit board before you go into making your device. But, especially if you’re not particularly part of the industry, you might wonder how exactly the “printed” gets put into the “printed circuit board”. After you’ve spent time learning the particulars of PCB design and laying out your new dream device, it’s time to bring Read Article
The Benefits of Using a BOM Management Tool for PCB The Benefits of Using a BOM Management Tool for PCB I am perhaps the worst speller in the history of the world. I’m the guy who asks his wife to sign the guestbook because I’m terrified that I will mess up someone’s name or write an unintelligible comment. The happiest days of my life have been when spell checkers became commonplace in web browsers, E-mail, and word processors. Even with that though there have still been a few times when I’ve driven a spell checker to its knees with some word that Read Article
Designing in an Intuitive Interface Leaves Time for Bright Ideas Designing in an Intuitive Interface Leaves Time for Bright Ideas in Users and Experienced Designers Keeping it simple with complex tasks demanding attention is challenging on a good day. Tools available to compute mountains of details with lightning speed is powerful but can be overwhelming if poorly designed. Powerful elegant tools move ideas into usage and benefit many. Many are benefited every day while using smartphones to communicate news, to navigate cars, and to keep scheduled calendar dates. Digital devices use printed circuit board Read Article
Using Rules-Driven Design to Control a High-Frequency Board Using Rules-Driven Design to Control a High-Frequency Board There was a time where high-frequency design belonged to realm of specialized engineers who lived in a world all of their own. For those of us designing printed circuit boards we rarely ventured into this realm, and when we did we were very happy to turn over that portion of the design to those engineers. They would perform calculations based on formulas that seemed to originate from the mystic arts, and then direct us to how the circuit should Read Article
Get Better PCB Manufacturing with Clear Instructions from Accurate BOM Data Build Your Own PCBs With Clear Instructions From Accurate Bom Statistics Data There is an intersection not too far from where I live that causes a lot of confusion. It’s a three-way intersection in the shape of a “T”, and yet only one branch of the “T” has a stop sign on it. I don’t know why it was built this way or why it hasn’t been corrected, but the results are often dangerous. People waiting at the stop sign who aren’t familiar with the intersection tend to assume that the other two branches have stop signs as well Read Article
Design Layout Integration and What it Means for Your Printed Circuit Board Design Layout Integration and What it Means for Your Printed Circuit Board Not all PCB design software is created equal. Your PCB design tools can come in a variety of interfaces, software programs, and workflows, and creating some consistency among tools can be a huge productivity booster. Design tools that are separated into different programs and that enforce different workflows will seriously hamper your productivity. When everything is separated into different interfaces, translating between programs creates the Read Article
Team Design Support Makes Rapid Prototyping a Breeze Team Design Support Makes Rapid Prototyping a Breeze If you’re looking to document features and changes in your next PCB, word processing software and email chains simply won’t do the trick. Keeping information consistent over time and across an organization takes design software that enforces a consistent data format that is accessible by everyone on your team. If you’re using design modules with different workflows and data formats, you might as well be creating documentation using pen and paper Read Article
Tips to Minimize the Effects of Differential Noise in RS485 Communication How to Reduce Differential Noise in RS485 Communication I’ve never been a morning person and pride myself on simply getting dressed and making it to work on time. Although I typically beat the traffic and appear at the office just in time, there have been occasions when I’ve arrived wearing mismatched socks. In these situations, I walk straight to my desk and hope that my embarrassment stays unnoticed. In electronics, you might deal with a completely different type of embarrassment if you fail to keep Read Article
How to Expand Input and Output for a Microcontroller How to Expand Input and Output for a Microcontrollers Circuit Board When working through practice boards and schematics very early on in my education, I remember more than once thinking about simply increasing the board size so that I could fit my components properly and make routing easier. It definitely would not have helped, and I’m glad I persevered in finding solutions through the challenges, but there are still times in my career where I’ve looked at the necessities of devices and wished I could just make Read Article