-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueShowing 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.
Creating the Ideal Data Package
Why is it so difficult to create the ideal data package? Many of these simple errors can be alleviated by paying attention to detail—and knowing what issues to look out for. So, this month, our experts weigh in on the best practices for creating the ideal design data package for your design.
- Articles
- Columns
- Links
- Media kit
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Turning ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out' into ‘Good In, Good Out’
March 23, 2021 | Tamara Jovanovic, Happiest BabyEstimated reading time: 5 minutes
We have all been there: updating our PCB design last minute before releasing manufacturing files to a fabrication house. This can be a particularly daunting task on its own and even more so if you are limited by time. While you are working on the design and making sure that you did not make any mistakes in the schematic or layout, you must also be aware of all the parts and information that you are working with.
It is probably best to create your own parts and footprints and that way keep track of the information you are putting in your system and what your outputs will be. However, that is not always the easiest task, especially if you are using complicated parts or if you simply do not have enough time to create every part from scratch. Sometimes, it is easier and faster to find a part online that already has all the information you need. If you had a system of where you store your part details, you must make sure to go back and verify that the specs for this new part from an external library do not have important details stored in different locations. Additionally, you need to make sure that the part itself is indeed the one you are looking for, as mistakes happen and sometimes the part you need is linked to wrong design files.
In this part of the design cycle, it is so easy to unintentionally introduce “garbage” into your system. Unless you have time to extensively check everything you bring in from an external source, it is very likely that something will not match up with your design data. In the end, this means you’ll have to put more work into your design and basically reverse-engineer a part that was supposed to save you time and effort.
Introducing bad data is never intentional. No designer or engineer purposely puts files into their system that they know will haunt them somewhere down the road. We all assume that if the basics are covered, we can fix a couple of errors manually, or go back later and fix any remaining issues while the boards are being fabricated.
But life gets in the way, and other tasks and issues may arise in your job; you might not have the time to go back and thoroughly check everything right away, or you simply forget. Then, a few months later, you must go through the same process again, which takes away valuable time, and you probably find yourself thinking, “I should have just done it right from the beginning.” There comes a time when correcting previous mistakes becomes such a long, complicated task, and the best way to deal with this is to eliminate it from the start. A little bit of extra work in the beginning of the design process saves a lot of time and effort in the long run.
I acquired a big part of my knowledge about keeping bad data out of my design cycle by trial and error. This can be a painful process with a steep learning curve. However, I think it is important to make those mistakes early on, and this is the best way to learn. Experience for yourself what bad data can do to your design and I can guarantee that you will everything you can to never make the same mistake again.
Engineers know what is needed in an output package when it is being sent for fabrication, whether it is for a printed circuit board, a mechanical structure, or a code. Introducing garbage into your system from unverified external sources will unequivocally result in having garbage in your outputs. Therefore, it is most reliable to create parts on your own. That way, you control exactly what you are putting into your system and what is coming out of it. You can create and follow a checklist that contains details about part information stored on each layer. It might be time-consuming in the beginning, but when you are finished with your design and all you do to be done is click Generate Outputs to get exactly what you are looking for; it will be worth all the initial effort.
Another process you can follow to make sure that bad data does not make it into your documentation is to work with templates. This also requires a little bit of work initially, but it makes every subsequent design easier and faster. Create a template for your OutJob file. Prior to making this template, communicate with your fabrication house and contract manufacturer about their capabilities and what kind of information they require to make the boards properly. It sounds trivial but having this template will ensure you always export exactly what your manufacturer needs, and more importantly, it will guarantee that you will get your design made correctly. We are all human—sometimes we forget to include important information even if we have done it properly hundreds of times before. There is way too much information to keep track of on your own, all the time, and having this sort of system in place will help with every design down the road.
These two practices have recently had a tremendously positive impact on how quickly and accurately I can deliver manufacturing documentation for a design. It sounds simple: Have a system and stick to it. In design, the system is everything and the accuracy of your work will depend on how seriously you take this task and stick to the system. Use all the resources available to you to come up with the best method that works for you, because it is no fun dealing with issues in your output documentation after putting so many hours into the design itself.
If you do end up implementing a system that works for you, instead of “garbage in, garbage out,” a better GIGO acronym would be “good in, good out.”
Tamara Jovanovic is an electrical engineer with Happiest Baby, a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of smart baby beds.
This article originally appeared in the March 2010 issue of Design007 Magazine.
Suggested Items
Microchip Enters into Partnership Agreement with Delta Electronics on Silicon Carbide Solutions
07/18/2025 | Globe NewswireThe growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and the electrification of everything are driving an ever-increasing demand for higher levels of power efficiency and reliability.
ESD Alliance Reports Electronic System Design Industry Posts $5.1 Billion in Revenue in Q1 2025
07/16/2025 | SEMIElectronic System Design (ESD) industry revenue increased 12.8% to $5,098.3 million in the first quarter of 2025 from the $4,521.6 million registered in the first quarter of 2024, the ESD Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community, announced in its latest Electronic Design Market Data (EDMD) report.
Beyond Design: Refining Design Constraints
07/17/2025 | Barry Olney -- Column: Beyond DesignBefore starting any project, it is crucial to develop a thorough plan that encompasses all essential requirements. This ensures that the final product not only aligns with the design concept but is also manufacturable, reliable, and meets performance expectations. High-speed PCB design requires us to not only push technological boundaries but also consider various factors related to higher frequencies, faster transition times, and increased bandwidths during the design process.
Prague PEDC: Call for Abstracts Deadline July 31
07/16/2025 | Pan-European Electronics Design Conference (PEDC)The second Pan-European Electronics Design Conference (PEDC) will take place Jan. 21-22, 2026, in Prague, Czech Republic. The call for abstracts deadline is July 31. Organized jointly by the German Electronics Design and Manufacturing Association (FED) and the Global Electronics Association PEDC serves as a European platform for knowledge exchange, networking, and innovation in electronics design and development.
The Pulse: Design Constraints for the Next Generation
07/17/2025 | Martyn Gaudion -- Column: The PulseIn Europe, where engineering careers were once seen as unpopular and lacking street credibility, we have been witnessing a turnaround in the past few years. The industry is now welcoming a new cohort of designers and engineers as people are showing a newfound interest in the profession.