PCB Designing Process
Designing a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) involves several detailed steps to
ensure that the final product functions as intended.
Here’s a general overview of the PCB design process:
1. Gathering Requirement Specifications: Complete overview of
product/project need to deliver to the customer.
2. Architecture Design: Basically it is a HIGH LEVEL DESIGN, it focus
on establishing the structure and layout of the PCB, but in this detailed
designing and manufacturing are not included.
3. Paper / Circuit Design: It involves the pin to pin connection and
connection interface. In this we take every device and draw its symbol for
it on paper with every interface defined.
4. Schematic Entry and Netlist creation: Schematic entry is basically a
visual representation of how the components are placed and
interconnected on PCB Board. Once the schematic entry is completed we
create Netlist and BOM (bill of material ) in the ORCAD tool.
5. PCB layout and gerber file generation: It involves Placement ,Routing
,and Gerber file Generation.
6. Analysis: Consists of Signal integrity analysis and timing analysis.
7. PCB Fabrication: Once a gerber file is approved,the next step is to
fabricate a PCB. Involves drilling of holes ,making top and bottom level
circuit ,fiducial and silkscreen marking.
8. Bare board test: Here, we check various things like we do Trace length
matching,impedance matching,silkscreen markings and fiducial
markings.
9. PCB Assembly: It is a process of attaching electronic components to a
PCB board to create a complete and functional electronic device.
[Link] Board Inspection: In this, we check the orientation, check
polarity and verify its pin connection.
[Link] bring up: Now in this we will verify the interface of hardware
that we have designed, firstly we power up the board and check all the
parts work properly or not.
PCB DESIGNING STEP USING ORCAD AND ALLEGRO
The tools which are used for Schematic is ORCAD CAPTURE and for layout is
ALLEGRO.
ORCAD provides a collaborative development environment,in which we can
create designs and components for our local workshop.
Here are the steps for designing is :
1. Creation of folder: Firstly we have to create proper folders for storing
designing part of PCB. There are several folders necessary like
Schematic folder, symbol folder, footprint folder, BOM folder, datasheet
folder, gerber folder..
2. Page layout: We select page preferences according to our requirement
like,what is the size of our page (A4,A3,A5) in which we draw our
schematic capture.
OPTION —---------------- SCHEMATIC PAGE PROPERTY
3. Library: Library creation is needed to have BOM,NETLIST, so that our
system knows what component we are using.
Place—------------------------- part
4. Adding symbol: Here we add symbols from existing libraries or create a
own symbol and add them in our existing library.
So in file system panel the library folder is already present but currently it
is empty so firstly we will be going.
File– New– Library
A working area is created in which we draw new symbols and add to
library.
5. Annotations: This feature is used to arrange name of components in
incremental order.
Right click on dsn file– Annotate–Incremental Reference Update
6. Design Rule Check: Once, we finish our schematic preparation we will
do DRC. In this, we check various electrical and physical rules.
7. BOM Creation: A list of description of material is required for ordering
of components.
The minimum requirement to generate any proper BOM is that serial
number, quantity, part number and value.
8. Footprint Creation: Footprint means, we have to create a dimension and
using those dimension we create a soldering mask on top of a PCB Board.
9. Board Design: Board designing is done by importing the netlist and
footprints.
[Link] File: It consists of all the information that is required to
manufacture a PCB.