Schematic Tips & Tricks - Phil's Lab #62

Schematic tips and tricks to improve legibility, clarity, and usefulness. Tool-independent techniques but shown in Altium Designer, as well as showing things not do featuring a 'commercial' schematic.

[SUPPORT]

[LINKS]

[TIMESTAMPS]
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Altium Designer Free Trial

00:55 Sectioning
02:35 Title Block
03:14 Text and Calculations
04:17 Symbols
05:20 Crossings
06:17 Net Labels
07:02 Horizontal Text
07:19 Power and Ground Direction
07:38 Junctions
08:20 Overlapping Text
08:38 Component Order and Placement
10:22 Colours
10:56 Annotation

11:26 What not to do...

ID: QIBvbJtYjWuHiTG0uCoK

[agriculex]

Some of the critiques you gave on schematics from ST are very relatable to me! It boggles me how some of the worlds biggest companies could produce schematics at this level of quality and clarity.

[dancollins]

Very much support Phil's comment around showing calcs for analogue electronics values - makes a peer review much easier, and helps later on when revisiting the project

[crackerdeadmachin]

Thank you for your videos, as an EE student they provide some really great practical tips that I rarely hear at school !

[azimyth]

I've been doing schematic capture and layout for a few years now, and some of your organizational tips are absolutely brilliant. This is going to make my life a lot easier, thank you!

[awuk]

Neat list of what to concentrate on, one of the reasons I love Altium is the fact it has all of this built in, I use KICAD at home and half of the stuff isn't in there, but it's fine for the price! I can't afford Altium for home use, but I use Altium for work and it does make things a lot simpler. Thanks for the video.

[electronix]

Great video for a beginner like me. I come from a software / operating systems background (undergrad degree was in CE) so I've always been a bit peeved at my lack of hardware knowledge in my undergrad. I learned some basic circuitry stuff but creating a schematic, a PCB, soldering, we were never taught those things and I aim on fixing that.

[Not-Only-Reaper-Tutorials]

Happily I see I'm not the only one to work in this way. Somebody made me feel guilty to be down at this level of clarity saying "less is enough. Don't waste yor time". Thank you for this video.

[xyz]

You videos are one fo the best for begginers. I've been sharing it to people starting out Altium adn PCB designing. As always, amazing explaination. Can't wait for the PCB design tips.

[AhmadAsmndr]

Thank you very much. I am learning every day something new and helpful from you. Vielen Dank!

[MAYDAYDEEJAY]

This is the well awaited video, from I hope a series about audio analysis! The APx555 is using AK5394A for the hi-res ADC and the AD7760 for the hi-speed ADC and is achieving around -125dB of THD+N. I can't remember of top of my head what front end is used in my DscopeIII, but the results are around -118dB of THD+N. Please keep sharing this project as it's particularly of interest to me.

[skrunsthestreets]

Any possibility of touching on ports vs. nets, I don't see them that often in your videos so just wondering if you ever use them.

[mohamedabdalla-esll]

Thank you very much, Phils. I always find what I have forgotten in your Videos. Thank you from the bottom heart. 🖐🖐🖐

[voytechj]

Dot in 4-way connection can disappear when schematic is scaled down. Printed schematic in paper after n-photocopy can dissolve dot connection as well, so it is safe not to use that type of connection.

[AndrewKiethBoggs]

Thanks for the fantastic tips, Phil. Just now entering industry as a recent grad and realizing how little I know. Hoping to leverage your knowledge and supporting you in some way like patreon soon.

[alfatech]

Thanks for these common sense tips, which are ignored by too many. Appreciate your content as always.

[eisnheim]

Top-notch quality content.
Thank you.

[_a_x_s_]

Great tips. They are really good practices in design.
Unconnected crossing is very useful, especially when you try to print it. Colour highlight of wire is a neat solution to determine the signal groups. I do not know why KiCad does not support those features while I think there must be plugins achieving those.

[thenextproblem]

Awesome mate! I find myself searching for where the hell is this random net goes... I will try to organize tightly and rightly 👌

[johnstephenson]

Very informative video, as always, thanks for your videos!

[BLOitouP]

Great Video! I will definitely will be using the guidelines with my current project. Would you be willing to make a video on how you deal with Schlib's, Pcblib's and integrated libraries? It would be also great to know how you source part libraries and work effectively with them.