I STILL REMEMBER a day back in the late '80s when an electrical engineer invited me into his office and showed me a CAD PCB layout on his monitor. How cool would it be to do that? Well, now I know. Pretty cool, but frustrating at times as well. Placing and routing are the meat and potatoes of PCB design. (If you don't like "meat," think of your own metaphor.) There are other things to do, but this is what holds it all together. The basic framework is built around two disci-plines: mechanical and electrical engineering. The two main features are the components and, of course, the board. An intelligent set of library parts is essential to getting the placement off to a good start. Over the years, schematic capture has shifted from the PCB designer's hands to those of the EE. The schematic and component libraries are often outsourced or created by an in-house specialist. The goal in the larger outfits is to allow the PCB designer to focus on placement and routing; Startups will put more hats on your head. Either way, our time is a pre-cious commodity not to be wasted.
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