Design007 Magazine

Design007-Feb2021

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12 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2021 Feature Interview by the I-Connect007 Editorial Team e I-Connect team spoke with Altium's John Watson about the hurdles surrounding footprints and footprint design. John talks about how being proactive and improving the CAD library can better QC processes and help protect against footprint difficulties. Andy Shaughnessy: I'm here today with John Watson from Altium to discuss footprints, footprint design, and what can be done to achieve best practices. is came about because we recently conducted surveys asking for design problems. e results came mainly from designers, and around a quarter of them said footprint issues were a big problem. John Watson: ere's a real conflict in a lot of companies. ey want to get their product to market. So, I think that the first issue that comes in with anything in a design is this con- flict between the management schedule and the design schedule. If you're creating a new Best Practices: Footprint Design and CAD Library Management component, for example, number one is that component needs to be put into quarantine. It's not used in new designs. It needs to be put into quarantine and checked. ere's such a rush to say, "We've got to get this done and get it out." And there's just too much going on in a design to catch things that are wrong like that. Barry Matties: How long should it be in quar- antine? Watson: It stays in quarantine until a couple of processes are completed. Number one, there is a QC process that's done on that component, and that QC process is actually multi-level. ere will be different steps involved. For example, if you have a new component, you bring that component in or that footprint in, and you verify that footprint to the datasheet. On this first level of QC, you want to set up your verification documents to that footprint. What are we going to be looking at? We're going to be comparing this footprint to the datasheet, we're going to be looking at IPC standards, whatever the standards are that you're going to

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