Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1348195
MARCH 2021 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 19 e other side of the coin are the problems that are created by the board designer, for instance. So, if I can get all the questions that I have on the design answered up front in that kickoff meeting, so much the better. If I can't, and I have to keep going back and forth, the customer might start saying, "I don't know if we've got the right designer on this project." Matties: Right, because they would expect you to know all your questions up front. Thompson: Another thing that Jen touched on is a situation when you're talking to a cus- tomer, and they only give you a limited amount of information. What is it that I can work on, on that project, to keep going? at's some- thing that I have been conditioning myself to be doing. If I'm stalled on one aspect, it doesn't mean I'm done with the job. It means I can work on drawings or prepare for outputs. ere's a whole plethora of stuff that I can do to keep that job going. Matties: One of the things I always hear is that designers don't understand the total manufac- turing process as well as they should. Kolar: at is very true. One of the most com- mon things we find with new designers is that they may do a good job with the copper and design, but they design something that's abso- lutely impossible to manufacture. It's a really common mistake of new designers. Matties: But that goes to not having all the data. If you're going to a manufacturing facility, you have to ask the right questions, and if you don't know what you don't know, you have to go ask somebody who does know what you should know. Kolar: Right, and then everything is going to vary depending on the process. is really comes into play now with rigid-flex boards, how they are manufactured, and whether it's a milling process or a routing process. Depend- ing on how they're being done, you have very different requirements for your layout. Some of it is people knowing that just because this worked at this one shop doesn't mean it's going to work here. Matties: Your data input supply line is from multiple sources. You have your parts ven- dor. You mentioned footprints. ere's a data input. You have your fabricator. You have your assembler. You have all the testing data input and you have to just, as you say, check the boxes to make sure you've covered each and every input. Kolar: One of the greatest "garbage in, gar- bage out" sources is footprints, and typically companies have their most junior people doing libraries because they're boring. "Oops, I didn't put in the clearances. I didn't recog- nize how to read the datasheet properly, that it was from top-down view vs. bottom-up view." at's a huge source of error. Matties: Yes, and much too late at that point. Is there any way to validate that prior? Kolar: Having good checks. Having a two- or three-part check, especially for critical parts that are hard to rework, or for any of your con- nectors, for any of your BGAs, QFNs, things like that. You need to really make sure that you've gone in and both checked against the schematic symbol, and then gone and checked against the datasheet, making sure you have the fully designated part number. Andy Shaughnessy: In one of our surveys, a few designers said things like, "Changes in sche- matic are not communicated to the entire team," and that the board is about to go out the door. en they realize the schematic has been changed. Kolar: Especially on big projects where there