LayoutQuickly

Our experience in PCB design ...

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Our team can support you at every stage, starting from design of electronic device based on your idea, and finishing with the mass production of your electronic product. Let's see how we do the PCB design which is in the core of design process.

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We start from making the error-free library of components, based on the customer's BOM (bill of material) and created based on the latest datasheets and our deep knowledge of how to make the correct component footprint in accordance to IPC recommendations and PCB/PCBA manufacturing capabilities. This job can be started "in advance", when your schematic design is not 100% ready yet, so we can save the time for you. It would be good to have on this stage:

• preliminary BOM

• datasheets for components

• your typical company requirements to the footprint details

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The next stage is the evaluation of the customer's design and requirements. We know that it's often impossible to prepare the full set of requirements for your project in advance, so at this stage it's enough to have some basic set of drawings, descriptions and rules which are typical and comfortable for you. More time we work with you, more projects we do for you - the better understanding of your needs and requirements we get. On this stage we need:

• preliminary schematic drawings

• preliminary PCB form factor and mechanical limitations

• draft placement picture of important components (connectors, LEDs, heatsinks etc.)

• preliminary requirements for SI, PI, thermal issues, impedances etc.

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After negotiating the initial requirements, we can start the next important stage - preparing the PCB outine in accordance to your mechanical requirements, calculating the PCB stackup based on SI/PI and impedance data, and placing components according to schematic & initial draft placement picture. After finishing this work, we send you the initial placement for negotiation, so you can check the job results and make some important corrections. We fully understand that it's impossible to find out all possible issues and problems of certain design in advance, so at this stage it's a right time to make some final desicions regarding the placement of the most important parts on the PCB, or even to make some changes in the BOM, schematic and/or the form factor.

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The next stage is setting the PCB constraints in ECAD, while we prefer, if it's possible, to make this step a little bit earlier, in parallel with making the initial placement work, because it could help to make the placement more accurate in terms of signal and power integrity, as well as of design for manufacturing and assembly. Due to a good quality of our footprint library and the good implementation of DFM/DFA/DFT rules in ECAD constraint system, the resulting placement will meet all the manufacturing limitations, which will reduce the number of PCB project iterations and manufacturing cycles.

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It's important to notice that to cut the time we love to use the templates and automations at the every stage of our work. We have the ready to use stackups with calculated and "tested in life" impedances, we have the library of PCB form factors, the samples of placement and routing of some typical interfaces including DDR, the library of high speed via structures, etc. The ready-to-use ECAD scripts help us to make the placement, routing and post-processing jobs much faster and error-prone.

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After finishing and negotiating the placement, and making the initial via fan-out, we can start the trace routing job as well as the power distribution layout. It depends on the project what kind of job we make first - routing or power/ground shapes, but we prefer first to put all possible power and ground polygons to design, as well as to place all the power coupling capacitors at the proper places, to solve the power integrity problems correctly. It's possible to make the PI analysis at this stage, to check and confirm that we do it right way.

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Some of our customers prefer to see and check the result of the power distribution network layout job. This could take several more days, but the final result can be more satisfactory for the customer, because at this stage you can still change something in your design and make some important corrections to the layout, to make it better in accordance to some your requirements which maybe were not considered earlier.

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The routing of most complicated and most high-speed nets is performed first - such as DDR address, data and controls, HDMI or USB high speed lanes, etc. It's important to have enough place to make the proper phase tuning and delay tuning, so we need to do this job at first, to take the appropriate needed area in each PCB layer. There are some good automations in the modern ECADs which allow us to make the first iterations of tuning faster, but after this we do the final routing and optimization of the tuning by hands, to ensure the best quality. You may see the job results at this stage and you will ensure that the high-speed part of the design is routed correctly.

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Another important part of routing is the on-board power supplies, as well as the sensitive analog circuits and/or the RF circuits which need the careful engineering work. This work may be done together with your analog or RF engineer, based on the details of datasheets, or based on the preliminary drawings provided by your analog/RF specialist. Otherwise, we can make this job based on our own experience and common analog/RF routing rules.

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Finally, the rest of the layout could be finished, and at this stage we can fulfill the Signal Integrity Analysis, Power Integrity checks and optimization, and the Thermal Analysis, to ensure that the design will work correctly in certain conditions.

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After completion you should check the final layout results and confirm that everything is OK, in accordance to your initial requirements and introduced corrections.

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The final DFM checks follow, and the export of Gerber & Drill files, and/or ODB++ (or IPC-2581), together with the stackup and PCB fabrication instructions and assembly drawings. At the end you obtain the full documentation package, which allows you to order prototype PCB/PCBA as well as the mass production. We can help you to choose the proper manufacturer for your project as well.

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