Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/873992
58 The PCB Design Magazine • September 2017 Over the years, I have seen a lot of differ- ent circuit board designs. In the service bureaus, I saw many different design technologies, while in companies with captive design departments I saw a lot of different design methodologies. Finally, as a CAD application engineer, I saw both different technologies and different meth- odologies. I think that it is safe to say that I have had a pretty good sampling of our industry and I am grateful for the variety that I have been exposed to. The truly interesting thing for me, however, has been in seeing all the different methods that the hundreds of designers that I've worked with have used in the creation of their PCB designs. We are all unique and that, combined with all the different types of designs out there, adds up to a lot of different ways to successfully com- plete a PCB design. In the service bureau, we had multiple cus- tomers with different specifications to follow and different libraries to use. Some designers would just plow into a new design and wor- ry about fixing the details later, while others would invest lots of time in research up front to avoid the corrections later in the design cycle. I have seen it happen over and over again; those who plowed into a design would spend a lot of time correcting mistakes later, while those who were overly cautious would take too long in their work. At the captive shops that I've worked with, where the designers were more involved in the entire design cycle and had better access to the corpo- rate libraries, staff engineers, etc., the story was often the same. Some designers would jump into the deep end of the pool of design without any thought to drowning while others would be so busy lac - ing up their life preservers of preparation that they would take too long getting out of the shallows and into the depth of their design. So, what's the best ap- proach here? How can we combine the best of both worlds in order to get the greatest design in the shortest time possible? What does it take to create the most efficient design process? Here are some of my thoughts on the matter: by Tim Haag CONSULTANT True Design Efficiency: Think Before You Click TIM'S TAKEAWAYS