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Current IssueProper Floor Planning
Floor planning decisions can make or break performance, manufacturability, and timelines. This month’s contributors weigh in with their best practices for proper floor planning and specific strategies to get it right.
Showing Some Constraint
A strong design constraint strategy carefully balances a wide range of electrical and manufacturing trade-offs. This month, we explore the key requirements, common challenges, and best practices behind building an effective constraint strategy.
All About That Route
Most designers favor manual routing, but today's interactive autorouters may be changing designers' minds by allowing users more direct control. In this issue, our expert contributors discuss a variety of manual and autorouting strategies.
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Mentor White Paper: Lean NPI at Optimum Design Associates
February 18, 2019 | Mentor, a Siemens businessEstimated reading time: Less than a minute
This is the first in a series of three white papers which discuss Optimum Design Associates’ business processes. For more than 20 years, Optimum Design Associates has offered its customers PCB design and layout services, and also bare-board assembly.
In this paper, designers will learn about ODA’s approach to integrating PCB layout and Valor NPI tools with ODB++ data output in order to achieve best practice Lean NPI.
To download this white paper, click here.
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Klaus Koziol - atgSuggested Items
Mastering PCB Floor Planning
08/28/2025 | Stephen V. Chavez, Siemens EDAPlacement of PCB components is far more than just fitting components onto a board. It’s a strategic and critical foundational step, often called “floor planning,” that profoundly impacts the board’s performance, reliability, manufacturability, and cost. Floor planning ties into the solvability perspective, with performance and manufacturability being the other two competing perspectives for addressing and achieving success in PCB design.
Elementary Mr. Watson: Routing Hunger Games—May the Traces Be Ever in Your Favor
08/26/2025 | John Watson -- Column: Elementary, Mr. WatsonI’d like to share a harsh truth, and I say this as a friend: PCB designers are often their own worst enemy. It’s rarely the complexity of the circuit, the last-minute changes from mechanical, the limited enclosure space, or the ever-expanding list of design rules that send projects to the dust heap of failed boards. More often, it's our own decisions, made too quickly and narrowly, and with too little foresight, that sabotage an otherwise good design.
Target Condition: Floor Planning Without a Floor
08/27/2025 | Kelly Dack -- Column: Target ConditionBy a show of hands, how many PCB designers have been asked to start a layout without a board outline, keep-out zones, or even height constraints? How many have had to work within a specific enclosure before the schematic was finalized? If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Starting a PCB layout without critical constraints is like hiring an interior designer to buy furniture and carpet for a house you haven’t even purchased yet, or, even worse, trying to fit four bedrooms' worth of furniture in a one-room cabin.
I-Connect007 Editor's Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
08/22/2025 | Andy Shaughnessy, I-Connect007In this week’s roundup, we have a variety of articles covering design, manufacturing, sustainability, and, of course, tariff negotiations. We have a milestone anniversary to celebrate as well, with Dan Beaulieu about to publish his 1,000th column. When does Dan even sleep? Here’s to hoping that we have 1,000 more weeks of "It’s Only Common Sense."
New Episode Drop: MKS’ ESI’s Role in Optimize the Interconnect
08/26/2025 | I-Connect007In this latest episode, Casey Kruger, director of product marketing at MKS’ ESI, joins On the Line With… host Nolan Johnson to share how CO₂ laser technology delivers faster, more accurate vias in a smaller, more energy-efficient footprint.