Article Published in Nov/Dec 2013 - What's New in Electronics

Australian technology design company Lockie Safety Systens usually designs PCB layouts in-house but when the company started a new projecy htat requires radically differnt architecture, it decided to engage experts.

PCB design experts have thousands of hours invested in their experience and they are constantly updating their knowledge base.  PCB design takes a great deal of patience and aptitude to take the electronic schematic to a finished PCB which is ready for manufacturing.

By far the most important part of PCB design is component placement however inexperienced designers tend to rush this process.  Typically, 60% to 70% of the time spent on the design should be allocated to component placement. 

Increasingly job descriptions require electronic engineers to have experience across many disciplines including hardware and software design and now even to utilize CAD software to layout PCBs.  For some engineers PCB design is the natural progression of the design process. 

Engineers are being thrown into the deep end when it comes to designing PCB’s.  The project manager believes that it’s cost effective to get the engineer to do the PCB layout as well as the engineering.  After all, the engineer knows the design inside out, has some knowledge of Altium Designer and has designed a few PCB’s before.