Here's my contribution to the survey...
1) What is your Job title?
PCB Design Engineer
2) Are you involved in PCB Design or some other activity - (please indicate)
PCB Design, Schematic Capture, Library Development, Mechanical Packaging,
Vendor liaison, project scheduling, manufacturing and test support among
other things...plus serving on the IPC committees and local chapter
activities.
3) What type of boards do you create?
Mobile and man pack HF and VHF RF transmitter/receivers, antennae tuners,
encryption boards, modems, digital and analog synthesizers, IF boards, power
supplies, and battery chargers, RF power Amps, microwave, military and
commercial communications gear.
4) How large is a typical design team at your company?
1 EE 1 ME and one PCB eng, - Not counting the Program manager, Sales and
Marketing manager, Purchasing Manager, and Manufacturing Engineer. We
usually kick off a project with all the representatives from each dept so
they can all look at it from their point of view and contribute to the
design direction.
5) What is the duration of your typical design time?
2 to 4 weeks depending on the board complexity for design, Schematic can
be as long, Proto build and test can be a few weeks, and usually there is
one more spin for the production run and release.
6) What percentage of the time spent is on Schematic Development?
30%
7) What percentage of the time spent is on PCB Design or Layout
40%
8) What percentage of the time spent is on Manufacturing support
15%
9) What percentage of the time spent is on Signal Integrity analysis
10%
10) What percentage of the time spent is on Thermal/EMI
5%
11) How many boards are typically in your projects?
Varies widely, typical projects are 2 to 3 boards, but we have products with
10 to 12 boards in them.
12) How many FPGA's or ASIC's are used in your projects?
We have newer designs with 2 or 3 CPLD's or FPGA's in them.. much of the
older designs had none.
13) What is the average layer count of your PCB designs
The large majority of the boards I have to maintain here are 2 sided PTH
technology. About 30 percent are multilayer, usually 4 to 8 layer boards
high density surface mount. (In the past I have also done Microwave designs
and they were typically 2 sided Rogers 6010 duroid or 4003 materials mounted
on silver plated aluminum carriers. But that was not at this company...)
The overall product does not need the high layer count autorouted type of
boards you hear about. Much of what I do here is hand routed, high density
surface mount designs.
14) What is the typical clock speed or frequency your designs operate at?
Hmm... well the transmitters are roughly in the 2MHz to 200MHz freq bands,
but the clock speeds on some boards are in the 10MHz range I would guess..
Not what I would call high speed...
15) Do you consider your designs to be 'high speed'?
Nope
16) Will you be doing much more, more, the same, less, or much less designs
next year?
Same
17) What CAD tool(s) do you use?
Protel for Schematic and boards, Autocad for 2D mechanical details and
Solidworks for Mechanical packaging.
18) Do you plan on spending more, same or less on CAD tools next year?
Same
19) Are Signal Integrity tools important to the success of your board
designs?
They are becoming an interest area... some simulation of circuits is done
here but not a lot. Labview and Spice are used to simulate portions of
circuits and establish test plans etc...
20) Are you very satisfied, satisfied, or not satisfied with your design
tools?
No CAD tool has completely satisfied my desire to get a fast -easy to use -
all encompassing tool for design. However, Protel has worked out to be the
best 'bang for the buck' so to speak. I have used Orcad, Mentor, Pads,
Protel, Tango, Applicon, Intergraph, Autocad, Cadnetix, CadKey, ProCAD,
Solidworks, Specctra, did I leave any out?
21) What does your CAD tool do Right? Or Wrong? What do you like about it
and not like about it.
I could write long paragraphs about this subject... but I have work to do...
So I will be brief, User interface is high on my priority list. Functional
autorouting would be nice in the interactive mode, but few of the boards I
need to do, can use an autorouter to any advantage. Circuit simulation would
be awesome if it took into account the layout. Library editors typically
suck... they all need better tools in those areas typically, Good DRC, and
flexible placement tools that let the designer design... not hamstring
him/her into jumping through hoops. Protel does 90% of what I wish for, 50%
of that it does so-so and the other 50% is not bad. It's getting better over
time, and I hope they get it truly stable so I can quit re-training every
year to a new release.
I am impressed with the comments so far.. this is interesting.
Bill Brooks
PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D., C.I.I.
Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510
http://pcbwizards.com
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