Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1494346
60 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2023 learning on the fly. What design tools have you used in your career? It's been Allegro for my whole career, and about 10 projects in Eagle in 2016. I touched PADS briefly years ago, when I was working with another service bureau, but I never fin- ished any projects on PADS. Now I'm learning Altium. Dack: Given the experience in this competi- tion, I say, "Everybody wins." You get expo- sure, networking, learning a new tool, and laying foundations for future growth. Would you recommend it for any new designers? Yes, the score sheet that I got from the first round was very informative. It highlighted the areas where I still need to grow. Dack: Did they do a design for manufactur- ability review or a design performance type of review? Yes, they checked it all because certainly that was in the criteria of project. We needed to be aware of the IPC reference material and all the classes, levels, and types. Dack: What's your message to the design and engineering community? What do you recom- mend to emerging designers who will be pick- ing up new tools? Never stop learning or challenging yourself. In every failure, there's a lesson, if not multiple lessons, so don't be scared of new tools even if you don't like the idea. Just learn as much as you can, and find a mentor that will open doors for you and teach you things. Dack: Thank you very much. It's been great. ank you both. I enjoyed it. DESIGN007 beforehand. Once I removed that plane, things sped up. Just having foreknowledge of how the tool works in that regard would be very beneficial to knowing what steps should be done first— for efficiency, to get to the end quickly with- out having to redo stuff. I had trouble with adjusting the vias (stacked microvias) while moving a circuit; maybe I wasn't grabbing the vias right, but the behavior was not what I expected so I had to improvise and accomplish what I could. Dack: What would you do differently or like to see? Shaughnessy: Could it have been different if you were on your familiar tool? I have just hundreds of scripts, hotkeys, and aliases that shortcut all sorts of commands; and I've got a library of elements and 26 years of developing my own environment. If I could have used a Cadence tool, I could have gotten at least twice as far. Again, I've only been on Altium for 10 days, maybe eight hours total. But I was really impressed with the install of Altium. at was just amazing. I don't really know what could be better with Altium, because there are so many ways to do the same thing that I don't yet know what's effi- cient and what's not. I like some of the menus and how they correlate. I haven't gotten into the query aspects, which is something I would really like to manipulate. You know, they have all these predetermined filters, sets, and que- ries so you don't have to hit all the buttons. Shaughnessy: Tell us about your job at Innovex. I own a service bureau and I've been doing that for six years. Shaughnessy: That might be why you're used to picking up new tools—it's not your first time 60 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2023