Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1536171
18 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2025 Elementary, Mr. Watson Feature Column by John Watson, CID Many people who design circuit boards love the routing part of the design. is is partially because we want to stop looking at the annoy- ing rat's nest of connections, which seem to have no rhyme or reason at first glance. We want to get to something more exciting. Routing is the ultimate part of solving the puzzle. You take all the messy lines from the schematic and turn them into neat, organized paths. For many designers, this is the job's most exciting part. It looks cool, feels like progress, and makes the board come to life. But (I can't lie, it's a big "but") sometimes, designers focus too much on routing and forget something important: Good routing starts with good planning. Routing actually begins all the way back in your stackup and, even more impor- tantly, the component placement. e rat's nest is the primary tool for compo- nent placement. e messy tangle of lines con- necting pins all over the board shows where every electrical connection needs to be made. is jumble can feel overwhelming, but it's a helpful guide: It tells you exactly which points need to be connected. I like watching students make their first push into the PCB and their reactions. ey think that they did something wrong, which, depending on my frame of mind, I sometimes play along with. In the 1993 movie, "Searching for Bobby Fischer," there's a powerful scene where Ben Kingsley, the chess instructor, helps a young PCB Routing: The Art—and Science—of Connection