Do you design RF boards (PCB) yourself - RF Cafe Forums

 Post subject: Do you design RF boards (PCB) yourself

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 7:48 am 

Do you RF engineers d o routing yourself you does a CAD enginner/technicians do it for you ?

I am a high speed digital designer and I have to occassionally do RF designs. I do my Schematics and Layout myself. Although I would have liked separate person do it, but integrated approach makes the decision easy. I do not have to tell anyone and convince him 10 design changes.

At the same time learning new tools is a time taking process. I uses PADS and allegro for designs. OrCAD for Schematics. I had experience with hspice but now I do not have the tool.

What do you RF engineers do for Layouts ....

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 Post subject:

Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 5:57 am 

Hi dehati,

Depending on what I'm doing, I'll at least help out with layout if not do the whole thing myself. Usually, I will use Cadence for circuit schematic simulation and performing the layout. Every now and then I'll get into ADS for the same task, but this is on a rare occasion.

At most of the companies I have worked for there are dedicated groups for performing layout. I may be fortunate in my experiences though, because the majority of the managers and even some of the layout engineers were ex-designers and knew everything fairly well and were willing to make changes as they had the background.

For PCB design, I have only ever used Protel.

I know exactly what you mean when you say learning a lot of tools is difficult. It has taken me many years to get used to doing layout in Cadence, and then having to learn how to do board layout on Protel is another challenge in itself.

-J

 Post subject:

Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:18 am 

Hello dehati,

That depends a lot on the structure of the company and its size. In most of the companies I have worked for there was someone dedicted for doing the PCB layout, and my role was to supervise over the layout for doing the right placement and routing - this is especially true for RF design but nowadays also true for high-speed digital design. Only in one company I was doing some RF layout myself.

Most of the PCB layout personnel I worked with had no design experience, but an experience based on previous designs they did; therefore, my inputs to them were critical for a correct layout to be done.

But a good thing is that you get to learn to work with new design tools, this may serve you well in the future and is a valuable knowledge.