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Tim's Takeaways: The Utility Belt

Back in school, I had planned on a career in music, specifically playing jazz clarinet or saxophone. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I enjoyed a long career as a circuit board designer that eventually lead to my current career as a customer support and training manager.

Even though a career in music was never realized, many of the lessons learned during my musical training have helped me in this career. One of those lessons came from a grizzled old saxophone teacher who taught improvisational jazz. He drilled us on the basics of music: scales, chords, arpeggios, etc.

As he said, “You always want to have something in your pocket to pull from on those nights when you just aren’t feeling as creative as usual.” He was talking about having some basic jazz patterns to fall back on while improvising, but the same general concept can be applied in our industry: Make sure you have some good basic tools in your utility belt to help you out when you need them.

The utility belt is a great thing to have. Batman would be long dead without his, and Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor would be useless without his. But for a circuit board designer, a utility belt is equally important.

All of us at one time or another will have questions about the CAD system we use, and one essential tool to have in your utility belt is a list of people you can go to for help. At the top of this list should be your CAD system’s friendly customer support staff (like me), so make sure that your company has current and up-to-date access to your CAD system’s technical support.

I couldn’t begin to tell you the many times that I have helped customers with a simple answer to a perplexing question. Just the other day I had a customer who was really stuck. He obviously knew our software well, but he was missing that one piece of information that he needed to break through the log-jam. I was able to answer his question and with that he resolved his problem. I really didn’t do anything too special for him, but my simple answer opened up for him a whole new direction that he could take, and that got him unstuck.

In the same vein, another important tool in your utility belt is a solid understanding of your CAD application. Knowing what you are doing when you hit the keyboard can save you lots of time and frustration, and will make you much more efficient at your job. Read the help manuals, seek out other users as mentors, spend time with the online tutorials, and even sign up for training if needed. And as you come up to speed on your design tools, be flexible and adapt to the process that your specific CAD application is designed for.

Let me tell you from personal experience, it’s extremely unproductive to berate the support staff because you were expecting the “View All” menu command to be in a different location than where it actually is. Using the excuse “Well, that’s the way my old CAD system worked!” isn’t very helpful. Instead, get well acquainted with your system and become the super user that others will look up to for help.

To read this column, which appeared in the April 2015 issue of The PCB Design Magazine, click here.