Greetings,

As a hardware engineer I have been tasked with laying out my first real circuitboard in years (first *real* board I guess).  It's proved a bear.  With years of experience designing hardware I am totally unprepared for the leap from the "logical" into the "physical" at this stage in my career.  No less, I am under a crunch (as we all are, right?) and this being a fairly simple board, I figured it's time I dove in and learned...Simply stated, I'm stumped.  Where can I find a comprehensive, clearly defined explaination on how to create *quality* PCB footprints and/or what the terms are used by the Footprint calculator made by PCB Libraries.  I see all of these fields to enter information but I'm not sure what these mean and how to translate what's on the datasheet to these fields.

I have read through a few of the IPC standards (some of the 122x stuff) and still can't say I undertsand much more of what's required.  Is there a more comprehensive standard or something that more clearly deliniates, "do this...don't do this"...or, "if the pad is this big on the datasheet, add n%".  These standards seem fairly high-level and at times seem almost circular.  No less, they are not totally specific and I'm not sure where I can get the very specific information.  I of course am aware that there's probably more to it than simply adding a bit here or a bit there, but assuming I know nothing, can someone offer some straight-forward advice on how to build up a board.  Nothing fancy, just the basics.  I should be smart enough to take it from there.

I hate to inundate people with how-to's but everything I've read, including a book on the fundamentals of PCB layout seems very high-level and seem almost afraid to say anything for certain.

Thanks for your help.

Joe



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