Being the Best Design Engineer

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

During DesignCon 2024, I met with Bill Hargin, founder and CEO (Chief Everything Officer) of the stackup design software company Z-zero. In this interview, Bill discusses his stackup curriculum, what it takes to become a great design engineer, and why the best designers keep reading and challenging themselves constantly so they can stay on top of their game.

Andy Shaughnessy: Bill, you did a presentation here at DesignCon. Tell me about it.

Hargin: Yes, it was great—it’s a popular topic, and the class was standing room only. The topic was the same as the title of the book I just wrote for I-Connect007, Stackups: The Design Within the Design. It's kind of like a red pill vs. blue pill situation. You can have the blue pill and have your fabricators design your stackups, or the red pill, and you can learn to do the nitty gritty work yourself as a CAD designer or an engineer.

Shaughnessy: Generally, you want the freedom of the red pill, so that you know what's going on, I imagine.

Hargin: Of course. There's a lot to learn, and there aren't college curriculums teaching stackup design. There isn't that much stackup training out there. So, I've really been leaning into researching it. If I wrote that book again today, it would be a totally different book. It's not that stackups have changed; I just keep learning. I'm researching at the same time that I'm developing software and teaching others how to do this stuff.

As Einstein said, “The more I learned about the universe, the more I realized how much I don't know.” It sounds weird to say that about stackups, but it's a little like that. What I find is that the engineering hardware design part of the world is pretty interested in learning how to do a better job with the backbone of the PCB, the stackup.

Shaughnessy: As you say, the fabricator will do the stackup, but it benefits everybody if the person at the front end understands more about it. But stackups seem to give people such a hard time.

Hargin: The problem is, let's say you have a master's degree in electrical engineering. You're a pretty smart guy. You've been trained on electromagnetics, and all the circuit theory that somebody could want. You might even be able to recite Maxwell's equations. But none of that helps you do a stackup, because the stackup is largely mechanical, with electrical properties. So, how do you learn how to do that? You need training, and having a good tool helps. I'm not trying to just sell my software like an infomercial. But the person who thought of this, the person who developed the class, and the person who developed the software, it's all the same guy. So, I can't separate those three things.

To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the March 2024 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.