Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1126810
26 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2019 Gaines: Yes. It would be very good for each designer to have a checklist beside their desk when they're getting ready to finish a product, detailing what they need to do—not just gener- ate Gerbers and NC drill files and send it over the fence to a board shop. When I output doc- umentation, I have folders for assembly data, bare board data, and testing data, and every- thing goes in each particular folder. If some- thing's for assembly, you grab the whole fold- er, which has anything that may deal with the assembly world or test world or bare board. It's good to have that reminder. Another re- source is your magazines. You've published information on what average documentation looks like, but I wonder how many designers look at that list and say, "What is that?" They don't even know what it is. Shaughnessy: I know that the post-processing part is usually a designer's least favorite part of the cycle. Designers focus on the board and not documentation. Gaines: Right. I love engineers, and I've worked with a lot of great ones, but many of them tend to be detail-oriented regarding the circuit de- sign. But from a board layout standpoint and what is required from that point on, they were probably never taught it. They're just flying by the seat of their britches, and when somebody tells them to get it, they'll do it. I went to the Design-2-Part show a while ago in Atlanta, and I met with a company who told the guy who had done their board layout that they needed a basic netlist out of the software, but he didn't even know what he was talking about. Many don't know what they don't know. Shaughnessy: Right, and how do we show them? What can we do about it? Gaines: I love webinars; they're one of the best, cheapest formats for information out there. If I'm doing a board layout, I'll pop a webinar up on the screen, even if it's something I'm not interested in, just to broaden my knowledge. If I get five minutes' worth of information out of that one-hour event, that was time well spent. Shaughnessy: Engineers and some designers still don't realize how much power they have at their station. To some extent, they can con- trol the cost of the final product and the re-