Here's my contribution to the survey...
1) What is your Job title?
Electrical Engineer
2) Are you involved in PCB Design or some other activity - (please
indicate)
PCB Design, Schematic Capture & Library Development plus serving on
the local chapter of the IPC Designer's Council.
3) What type of boards do you create?
Mainly digital, w/some analog (servo control) on multilayer boards
which go into tape libraries/loaders.
4) How large is a typical design team at your company?
5 EEs and 3-4 MEs.
5) What is the duration of your typical design time?
2-3 weeks depending on the board complexity for design, Schematics
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?
40%
7) What percentage of the time spent is on PCB Design or Layout
50%
8) What percentage of the time spent is on Manufacturing support
5%
9) What percentage of the time spent is on Signal Integrity analysis
1%
10) What percentage of the time spent is on Thermal/EMI
1%
11) How many boards are typically in your projects?
Varies widely, typical projects are 4 to 5 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?
2-3 in any single project.
13) What is the average layer count of your PCB designs
Average layer count would lean more towards 10 these days. Was 8
before and have a 12 layer one as my highest layer count.
14) What is the typical clock speed or frequency your designs operate at?
We're dealing with 100+ Mhz bus speeds.
15) Do you consider your designs to be 'high speed'?
To some degree. I have not had the need to do impedance controlled
designs. That may change soon though.
16) Will you be doing much more, more, the same, less, or much less designs
next year?
Same, maybe a little more. It cycles from a little to a lot in a
given year.
17) What CAD tool(s) do you use?
ePD (Viewlogic) for Schematics, P-CAD for layout, Specctra for
routing and then Corel Designer for documentation (Fab and assy dwgs).
18) Do you plan on spending more, same or less on CAD tools next year?
A little more. We just purchased the High Performance option for the
router. This means I now have the full whizbang for the Specctra
autorouter!
19) Are Signal Integrity tools important to the success of your board
designs?
Not yet. But we've been looking into it for the near future.
20) Are you very satisfied, satisfied, or not satisfied with your design
tools?
Fairly satisfied. I haven't come across a design which my
P-CAD/Specctra bundle couldn't handle!
21) What does your CAD tool do Right? Or Wrong? What do you like about it
and not like about it.
P-CAD's GUI has been fairly easy to use. It could be better in the
HDI area of design (microvias, stacked vias etc.) All CAD tools have room
for improvement (like us <grin>)! That's the beauty of electronics. I'm
just glad I never had to do Mylar and tape for designs. But I have a
lot of respect for those who did!
Happy TGIF, everyone!
Bill Gebhardt, C.I.D. +
Electrical Engineer
IPC Certified Advanced Interconnect Designer
Overland Storage, Inc.
San Diego, CA
(858)495-4222
[log in to unmask]
Treasurer - IPC Designer's Council, San Diego Chapter
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