All of us want to design PCB prototypes as cheap as possible and as fast as possible, without many trials and errors. All things considered, when you begin with a new PCB design and spotlight the entirety of the time you have on circuit design and component selection, at that point you have another time on your PCB design. In any case, in terms of PCB fabrication, when it’s an ideal opportunity to transform your idea into a circuit board, at that point the PCB layout process becomes important. Then, what are the important points to design PCB to make your prototyping process gets faster? We have our top ten tips for designing the PCB layout to realize it.
1. Set Widths of The Trace Before Doing PCB Design
Even before you start routing nets or laying down parts, you have to understand your trace’s width required to accommodate their desired current. Generally, we suggest having your traces to be adjusted at 0.01 in. for digital and analog signals with the low desired current. Moreover, if you are dealing with traces accommodating higher than 0.3 amperes current, then set the traces wider.
2. Be Careful with The Component Placement
3.Set The Ground and Power Planes
We suggest creating your ground and power planes in the middle layers of the PCB. Placing these layers will make your board firmer and also make sure that it will not bend for the process of component placement.
4.Consider Electromagnetic Interference In Your Board
As you may be working on PCBs with high voltages, you have to understand that electromagnetic interference (EMI) can screw up the low current and voltage control circuits. You can reduce the EMI effect by separating your control ground and power ground planes for every stage of the power supply. If you place the ground plane amid the layer stack-up, please make sure to put a path as impedance. And please be remember to ALWAYS consider the RF part firstly before anything since it carries high-frequency signal and if you put it in the last time you will not have enough space to accommodate it and it ends up making your design fail.
5.Prevent Combining Lead-Free and Leaded Components
There are a lot of more established parts out there still being used that does not have a lead-free option. And keeping in mind that you may be enticed to throw one of these in with your latest lead-free components, please reconsider. Both lead and lead-free parts have significantly different heat specifications, particularly for RoHS certified parts.
6.Create Correct Silkscreen Marking
We suggest identifying parts on your PCB in an easy and simple way to know the manner which makes the parts placement and the orientation/direction process as easiest as possible. For instance, including helpful symbols which guide where the cathode and anode pins of a LED are placed on the board.
7.Consider Heating Issues
If you have ever found a circuit’s performance degrades over time, maybe you will understand how costly the heat issues could be in some off-the-shelf products. To help you deal with the heating issues, find the parts on your board which will dissipate the highest heat. One of the effective methods to discover this information is by finding the Thermal Resistance ratings in the datasheet and also reading their supporting guidelines.
8.Give A Gap Between The Board Edge and Copper
Please remember to give a small clearance or gap between the board edge and the traces or copper planes. Set the design rules in DRC before starting the design process, such as defining the plate-to-edge or copper-to-edge clearances. If you want to set a gap of a minimum of 50 mils, it should be ok. But always double-check to your manufacturer before to make sure the clearance requirements that they suggest.
9.Please Double-Check The Solder Mask
It commonly happens when designers mistakenly ignore a solder mask between pads. It is possible when designers set the settings from initially a larger board to a smaller one. And of course, now they have too large pad holes. Whatever the case, in every case please double-check when you want to send your board design to the manufacturer or vendor that all the pads already have a solder mask layer between them. These tips will reduce the chance of corrosion and bridging.
10.Please Double-Check the Acute Angles
