Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1538269
32 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2025 Perhaps this was the work of an architect who had never lived in a small space before and thought, "Why not put everything in one room?" One thing was clear: This wasn't just quirky. It was a textbook case of what happens when floor planning goes off the rails and a cautionary tale for anyone designing with limited space. When form doesn't follow function, you don't get innovation; you get a bathtub next to your blender. Here's the kicker: While that's rare in real estate, it's shockingly common in PCB design. Instead of placing a tub next to the stove, it's an RF front end snuggled up next to a buck converter or a high- speed digital line doing a tango across an ana- log ground plane. It's the engineering equivalent of brushing your teeth while frying an egg, and it's just as messy. Getting in the Zone PCB floor planning is very similar to architec- tural zoning. Just as your city's code enforce- ment wouldn't allow a nightclub to open next to a nursery, a well-planned board separates func- tional "rooms" like RF, analog, digital, and power into clearly defined, isolated zones. Each area has its own crucial behavioral personality: RF requires quiet, analog needs stability, digital is noisy and fast, and power is often downright messy. When these zones are properly organized, signals flow logically, return paths are clean, and the board per- forms like a well-coordinated machine. But in practice, some PCB layouts look like they were pieced together at 2 a.m. after three energy drinks and a long night of denial, with components scattered without rhyme or reason. You might see a sensitive RF front end wedged between a buck converter and a high-speed microcontroller, as if nobody told the designer that noise leaks. Power regulators hum and buzz like a karaoke machine cranked up in the middle of a library, blasting EMI into frag- ile RF traces that were trying to do their job and pass a clean signal. Digital clocks glitch away within millimeters of an op- amp desperately trying to hold onto a mil- livolt-level of accuracy. All of this is done in the name of convenience or creative engineering gone wrong. The bottom line is that functional zones aren't just suggestions—they're non- negotiable. Treat your board like a min- iature city and give each zone the space and shielding it deserves. Otherwise, you're not designing a PCB but rather an electrical mosh pit, and everyone is invited and won't play nicely together. The problem with the PCB floor plan is that it is often totally out of the designer's control. The com- ponent placement is often treated as a mechanical process rather than an electronic one. Designers typically constrain themselves by the physical requirements of the product enclosure. Connectors must align with external ports, mounting holes must match standoffs, and components like but- tons, LEDs, or displays are fixed in location by the industrial design. These mechanical requirements often dictate where components must be placed before any consideration is given to electrical per- formance. As a result, large portions of the board are laid out based on fit and form rather than function. There's a tendency to prioritize space efficiency and routing convenience over signal integrity. Components are arranged to minimize board size or make routing easier, without fully considering how signals flow between them or where return E L E M E N TA RY, M R . WATS O N