A Guide to Production Grade PCB Designing
By: Sanskar Biswal
Tags: DIY, Autodesk, Electronics, Pcb Design, Tutorial

Fig. 1 A Completed PCB Design

An electric circuit is a set of connections between electronic components. In a very abstract form, and electric circuit has a source of electric current, a destination for the current (ground) and electro-mechanical components that draw power from the flow of electricity to do some work. A PCB or Printed Circuit Board is essentially a circuit which can be feasibly and reliably mass produced. Mass production reduces cost and lower cost lead to more consumption leading to virtuous production cycle.

Take note that the primary purpose of a PCB is to finally be mass produced. Several DIY developers design PCB’s for just prototyping and are not necessarily rigorously looking towards mass production. In this guide, I will highlight the entire procedure, in a step by step guide to design production grade PCB. Let’s get started!

Note: In the following tutorial, I use Altium CircuitStudio. However, the principles of PCB design will remain the same no matter which tool you use. The core concepts will remain the same, including the terminologies. This tutorial can easily be adapted into Altium Designer or Autodesk Eagle with remarkable ease.

Step 1. The Circuit

It goes without saying, to design a PCB we need a circuit that we want to design. The circuit you are designing can be simple or complex. In this tutorial I am going to use a fairly intermediate level circuit.

The circuit above is a 555 alarm circuit. From an electronics perspective, it is quite simple and straight forward. It is powered by a 5V source. The NE555 timer will generate a square pulse wave. The speaker will output sound in sync with the waveform when the button is pressed. Simple.

I chose this circuit because it has several elements that a normal circuit designer will use, only in a lesser quantity. Lets look at the components in the circuit. Broadly speaking, we have:

555 timer which is an IC (integrated circuit)

Passive elements like resistors and capacitors.

Active elements like the PNP and NPN transistors.

I/O components like the button and the speaker.

We can now start the actual process of PCB designing.

Step 2: PCB Schematic Design

A schematic representation is essentially a drawing of all components and their connections. All PCB design software make use of schematics to then project into the PCB layout design. Thus, the first step in PCB design is to create a good schematic.

The main purpose of a schematic is to be sort of a blueprint, not just for the PCB software but also to any person reading. The components you add to the schematic have pin layout and labels. The components are connected to one another using wires

ets. A well designed schematic is one that is clean and easy to read. The connections need to be clearly visible.

Fig.3 Avoid making schematics in this way

The example above may be a functional schematic but it is not easy to read. The connections are numerous and the wires

ets overlap in several places. In short it is a functional schematic for personal use but not necessarily of any use if you intend to share it. Let’s get started with designing our very own schematic. Before we start off, here are few common keywords: