Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1004549
10 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2018 Feature by Andy Shaughnessy I-CONNECT007 For years, I've been running into Susy Webb at PCB West, where one of the classes she teaches is PCB design basics. I always ask Susy about the class, especially the attendees' backgrounds. Over the years, her class has begun drawing more and more degreed engi - neers, with fewer "traditional" PCB designers attending. In this conference call with I-Connect007 Editors Happy Holden and Patty Goldman, I asked Susy to discuss the next generation of PCB designers, some of the trends she's seeing among new PCB designers, and the need for designers to take charge of their own design training, whether their management agrees or not. Andy Shaughnessy: Susy, you teach a PCB basics class. Why don't you give us a quick review of the class and what you teach in the class? Susy Webb: The class started out as a two-day class and it has changed over the years, some- times going down to half a day and some- times up to a full day. For the last few years it's been a full day class. There's way more material than can be covered in one day, so that requires me to step back to 10,000 feet and shoot at the major topics involved with design like building library parts, placement, and routing techniques. Since it's a basics class, I never know ahead of time whether I'll be getting somebody who's been pulled into the realm of design from other areas, and is completely new to design. Some people come in that way, needing the absolute basics, or some people come in for a refresher, or as engineers, and they all want slightly different information discussed in the class, and when there is just one day, you do what you can do. I do explain that when we start the class. So it can be rather basic for some and sometimes over-the-head for others. It's a hard line to draw to figure out what goes into a class and what doesn't.