Review of a PCB Layout: Do you do same mistakes? - For Beginners (Part 1 of 4)

In this video series I am commenting a PCB layout done by someone starting with hardware design. We will speak about the things which could be done differently or which could be improved.

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It is much appreciated. Thank you,
- Robert

[RobertFeranec]

Thank you very much for so many nice words :)

[MatzeMaulwurf]

Nice! But I would love to see 2-Layer Layout. Most beginners will start with two layers. Most issues you mentioned are suitable to 2-layer boards, I think. You are a great teacher. I‘m in commercial pcb design since 15 years but learned a lot from your videos!

[CodeJeffo]

More of this king of videos would be really awesome and appreciated by many. Keep it up Rob!

[aliuzel]

If you dont know electronics fundementals and the features of the components you are using, you will probably fail at the layout stage.
This video is very good to show how to combine electronics knowledge and layout.
Thank you so much.
Beside this, it may also good to search the best possible component selections during the design. I guess there are many better regulator choices that make the layout easier and the circuit design better.
Thank a lot again for the great video Robert.

[kamejoko]

First do placement and in mind figure out how to route the traces, second do routing and optimize the layout, take care of thermal dissipation because it is important when assembling the board.

[aliuzel]

I am also working on a complicated schematic design (expexted 3500 -4000 components, PCIE 3.0, 10G ethernet, 16 layers, ~ 25 cm × 50 cm) and will leave the layout design to a design house. I may share some parts of it when I make it work.

[tc]

Thanks Robert. I feel like there should be an entire part 0 that just goes over the placement decisions.

[khoily]

Superb explanation. Thank you very much for your constructive critiques on how PCB design should be done.

[ismailovali]

Thank you so much Robert, I like you very much :)

[kfirmaymon]

Great work, happy to seeing you again, can't wait for part 2.
I would love to have a tutorial on differential pairs and way they need to be impudence matches

[bloguetronica]

Learned a lot with this video. I thought it was not OK to use thinner traces near the pads (i.e. the trace should have the same thickness), but now I see it is totally OK to do it. My designs were restricted to enveloping small pads with filled polygons, and then connecting thick traces to these polygons, but that is somewhat limiting, and now I find it unnecessary, after seeing your video.

[ekarter]

Glad to see your professional videos again, Robert!

[vonnikon]

About having the via behind the capacitor. This is a common opinion, but I have not actually seen any conclusive evidence that this is necessarily the best approach.
In fact, every simulation I have seen indicates the the most ideal layout is to have as many vias as possible, close to both the pin and the capacitor.

And no one is suggesting placing the vias behind the capacitor in large BGA designs.

Think about the purpose of the decoupling capacitor: To provide a low inductance source of charge to the pin.
There are two sources of charge here: The capacitor, and the power plane.
By moving the via behind the capacitor you are increasing the inductance to one of the two sources of charge.

[IncaTrails]

Hi Robert - Glad to see that you are publishing again

[gettingpast]

Very good! Thank you! I will be watching more of your videos.

[mdchethan]

Hi RF, Great advice about the power supply design (Applies to both Switching and Linear power supply design), which is the placement of input capacitor and the associated Via. Hope to see remaining parts soon.

[kaumohlamonyane]

RF is such a cool name for an electronic engineer 🤣💯🔥

[emi]

Very interesting video as usual. Thanks for the hard work

[CuriousMaker]

This is awesome. I wouldn't mind sharing all my designs if you would critique the design in videos. It is just wishful thinking I am aware that it is time consuming and impossible! This is where I struggle as I don't have peers to review my designs.

[nopair]

Hi Robert welcome back. I'm really happy see you. thank you for share good video. as a software developer I enjoy of your videos.