PCB design in the eyes of engineers

The key to designing a high-quality PCB is the mastery of circuit principles. 

People who don't understand schematics can hardly design high-performance PCBs. Even though they mastered some basic rules of PCB design, they could not understand the schematic diagram, did not understand the characteristics of the signal, did not understand the interrelationship between signals, and there was no reasonable and flexible application of these principles, and they could not provide reasonable and efficient results. With constraints, there is no way to design a good PCB. Do not simply learn PCB for learning PCB. The fundamental thing is to improve the skills in all aspects of electronic technology. The most basic, to understand the characteristics of digital circuits and analog circuits, to understand the differences between the two and the different processing methods on the PCB, the analog signal how to go, how to deal with the analog signal, digital signal how to Go, how to deal with digital signals and so on. It is also necessary to understand the concepts and signal characteristics of some long-used buses. The simplest example is to understand the difference between the serial bus and parallel bus in order to make the best for serial and parallel signals on the PCB. Processing, only by understanding the characteristics of the differential signal in order to better USB, SATA, HDMI and other differential signals do the best wiring. There is the understanding of the entire circuit principle, only the true understanding of the principle of the circuit, in order to distinguish between different functional modules, make a reasonable layout, reasonable layout is the most fundamental guarantee for reasonable wiring.

The decisive factor in the quality of PCB is the designer, not the software. 

There are many softwares for PCB, and the performance difference is also relatively large, but fundamentally, software is just a tool. Although design is more and more complex and tools are more and more advanced, the most important factor in PCB design is people. One of the strengths of Allegro is its advanced layout and routing and simulation of the above algorithm, but the most important part is that it provides users with a complex control interface. Allows users to more easily control the design of the PCB (by adding constraints). In fact, you can master the software interface operation very well, but you do not know the circuit principle, you will not know how to set constraints. Different from APR in IC design, in PCB design, the possibility of using automatic layout and wiring is still very small, mainly manual wiring. Therefore, fundamentally speaking, the algorithm for automatic placement and routing of software is further advanced, and there is no manual wiring. Too much meaning. Different software offers us only the differences in the characteristics of the use of differences in the occasion, and this difference does not determine the performance of the designed PCB.

So, in general, I think the key to learning about PCB design is to learn and master electronic technology. This is fundamental. As for the PCB software, find a software that is easy to use and conforms to your own habits. The software that fits the characteristics of the PCB you design is enough. There is no need to choose the most complicated and most powerful one. It will only be your learning. The burden.