It’s important to leave enough room between all of the traces and pads on your PCB layout. ( Image source) Tip #4 – Leave Enough Space Between Traces Knowing the thickness and current needed for your PCB makes finding out your trace width easy. A word of advice – if you have the opportunity to use larger trace widths than what your calculator shows, go for it! So long as you meet your manufacturer’s requirements then the larger your traces are, the less likely you are to get a board back with broken connections.
To determine the thickness of your traces, you can use a handy trace width calculator like this one from Advanced Circuits that will allow you to plug in your estimated current and thickness and get a trace width value in return for internal and external layers. Controlling the width of your traces is one of many ways to reduce how much heat builds up on your board, and the wider your traces, the less resistance that electricity will encounter when flowing through your circuit. When you have electricity cruising through all of your copper traces, it’s going to produce some serious heat, and this is always a concern with electronics. And by using trace widths and spacing that your manufacturer can produce, you’ll make everyone’s life easier when it comes time to make your board. Why? By knowing this information up front, you can set your trace width and spacing values in your design rules and avoid having to re-route your entire board layout down the line. Tip #2 – Understand Your Manufacturer’s Specificationsīefore you start laying down a copper trace, first take the time to give your manufacturer a call or shoot them an email to see if they have any specific requirements on minimum trace widths, trace spacing, and the number of layers they can handle on a board (for the right price) There’s nothing more satisfying than designing a beautiful board like this one. It’s a carefully crafted process that requires some love and attention to get the results you want.Īvoid the temptation to rely on your autorouter. And most importantly, you’re the master of your design, and you’ll be able to produce way better results by doing the routing process yourself. Why? It’s not always the most accurate, and if you’re a fan of symmetry, then your autorouter will most likely disappoint. Outside of these three reasons, we’d recommend not relying on your autorouting to complete all of the routing on your board layout. A quick run through the autorouter might show you a new path that you hadn’t considered before. Lastly, you can use the autorouter as a source of inspiration for how you might want to route some traces that you just can’t complete. You can also use the autorouter to discover bottlenecks and other critical connection points that you might not have seen during your component placement process.
If it’s below 85%, then this is an indication that you need to make some adjustments to your part placement. You can use the autorouter after you place all of your components to see what completion rating you get. But wait! Autorouters, as good as they can be, are never a replacement for routing yourself, and should only be used for a few reasons, including:
There’s a tool tucked into nearly every PCB design software out there called the autorouter, and as a beginner, your eyes might light up thinking this is an easy way to solve your routing problems. Use these top 10 PCB routing tips and also our top 10 component placement tips to make your first PCB layout a success. If this is your first time doing a PCB layout, then seeing a chaotic looking ratsnest might be a little intimidating. It’s simply a matter of how much time you spend on each activity. This is still true today, and the placement of your components will end up deciding how much time your routing will take, but that doesn’t mean that routing your PCB is any less important. There’s an old saying that goes something like this – PCB design is 90% placement and 10% routing. The Top 10 PCB Routing Tips for the Beginner The Top 10 PCB Routing Tips for Beginners