Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1337116
18 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2021 Matties: What I'm looking at is keeping this QC and this quarantine process in mind, bal- anced with the time pressure. Watson: at's true. You have to take the steps to be proactive in this process. You can't be reactive. at's probably what is really key; you have to not assume that that component is correct. You assume it's not correct until you prove differently, and that's probably the motto that should be plastered onto anybody who even touches a component. It is wrong until you prove it otherwise. Nolan Johnson: John, that raises a good point as far as where these footprints are coming from in the first place. You have to assume it's wrong until you prove them right. So where do they come from in the first place? Watson: Probably one of the biggest mistakes I've seen in companies is that they give edit rights or permission to everybody to create libraries or create a component. ey think it's more efficient for them to let everybody create components. is was actually a policy I saw done in a company when we were set- ting up their libraries and getting this started for them. I said, "So who's going to be your librarian?" ey said, "Oh, no, we're not going to have a librarian. Everybody's going to be able to create components." I said, "I would suggest not to. at's not going to work." eir reply was, "No, no, no. It's going to work for us." I'm not the sort of person who goes nose to nose with you to prove to you what you're doing is wrong. So I said, "Let's go ahead and let's run this policy to see how it goes." I just began putting footprints and compo- nents up on the screen, and I said, "What do you see wrong here?" I mean, there would be stuff that was just so blatant, like rotated pads, everything. at just brings up the complete process. First off, who's touching these components? Who has the permission? I would say that you give one individual or maybe a couple indi- viduals that right. I label the librarian as the most important person on my team. Johnson: One of the things that I'm hearing here is there's a lot of design team attention and effort being put into parts, components and footprints; into managing and verifying those, and making sure they're accurate. And yet, at the same time, if a CAD tool is like a word processor, the mark definitions are like fonts. Why do we have individual design teams out there building all their own fonts? Watson: at's a really good point and a really good question. I don't understand exactly why they would do that, to be honest. Shaughnessy: Would it be because they can't trust the datasheets? If you're assuming it's wrong, do you build a better mousetrap? Or do you work with what they gave you? Watson: Yes, exactly. It's why I've actually seen libraries, when you go in there, they're like, "We're going to have an 0402 resistor, and we're going to put in all 32 heights of that resis- tor because we want to be pre- cise." It's a lot less impact on the footprint of a component because you're going to perfect that 0402 resistor footprint, for example, and then you're just going to repeat that. You're just going to reuse that footprint.