Knowledge that PCB prototyping engineers need to have.

PCB design is a very important part of electronic product design, and it is an important carrier of electronic products. A good PCB should not only look good, but also meet the requirements of high cost performance, good electrical performance, high stability and reliability, easy production and maintenance, and easy certification. Some technical experts believe that as an excellent PCB engineer, you should have the following knowledge architecture:

1. Be familiar with at least one mainstream EDA tool in the industry

There are many PCB design software, and the main ones currently used in the market include the following four: Cadence Allegro, Mentor, EE, Mentor Pads, Altium Designer, Protel, etc., among which Cadence Allegro has the highest market share.
Allegro has many advantages, such as friendly software operation interface, fast response speed, high operation efficiency, rich secondary development functions, perfect rule manager functions, powerful high-speed design exclusive functions, etc. It has good support for large projects, and will not significantly reduce the response speed due to the increase in design scale. There is basically no pressure to use Allegro to design projects with tens of thousands of pins, so it is very suitable for the communications industry, commercial servers, industrial control, and military fields.

2. Familiar with devices, understand circuit schematics, and recognize key signals

Common electronic components: resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, diodes, transistors, field effect transistors, optocouplers (OC), sensors, crystal oscillators, relays, buzzers, rectifier bridges, filters, switches, fuses, etc.
Key signals include: power supply, analog signals, high-speed signals, clock signals, differential signals, synchronization signals, etc.

3. Familiar with the processes and processes of several common boards and circuit board factories

Common boards: cardboard, semi-fiberglass boards, FR-4 fiberglass boards, aluminum substrates, etc.