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PCB Design

Inspiration drawn from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/wiki/index/

https://github.com/kitspace/awesome-electronics

PCB design is an important part of electrical engineering, for Academy Racing as well as university. PCB design allow you to design bespoke solutions. With the improvement of the technology, the cost and barrier to entry has been lower and lower. There is great software and tools that make it easy for anyone to have a stab at designing a PCB. 

PCB design is a art, there are many layers (literally) and it has to be well throughout and planned. It is very hard to design a good board, but very easy to design a terrible or non-functional board. You find that when designing anything you will have to balance many things at the same time. eg. ease of design, cost and time. 

In my opinion, the best way to learn PCB design is just to look at other people's designs. Opensource designs are always a good read as these usually will include a decent write up. Then formus such as; Reddit with PCB design reviews eg. r/PrintedCircuitBoard, PCBWay community projects. Then manufacture reference designs are usually ok, they are mostly catered to experienced designers so things will be done differently from typical designs, however when designing with a complex component it is always nice to view. 
Over time you will be able to spot certain patterns and then be able to follow those patterns yourself.  

Useful software

There are many pieces of software for designing PCBs, but these are preferred for a variety of reasons. This is the software that most members of the team use.

KiCAD

A EDA software for development and design of PCBs. This is a commonly used open source piece of software, mainly used by hobbyist.

Below are some useful plugins for KiCad that should be used, making things significantly easier:

  • Interactive HTML BOM
  • Impart GUI for KiCad
  • Fabrication Toolkit
Parts search engines

These are often build into Digikey and Mouser under ECAD. These allow you to find symbols, footprints and 3D models that aren't build in to KiCad. 

  • Ultralibrarian
  • SnapMagic
  • Octopart



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