We've hired a new PCB designer but the engineers are still doing their own PCB layout until he starts.
I'm revising one board.
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The changes involve maybe 15% of the design, but making changes is so confusing that I just ripped most of the parts off-board and started the layout almost from scratch. The power pours make using the old placement even trickier. I saved some of the fast stuff upper-right.
This is picosecond stuff, so layout is super tedious.
I have two SMA connectors on 0.5" centers, which won't make me popular in production. Maybe I'll be generous and give them another tenth of an inch.
I used PCAD since the DOS days. Eventually it ran out of gas, and I switched to several other expensive systems, then to DipTrace. Schematic entry, manual and autoplace and autoroute, built-in component list, search, modify components, trace timing, differential trace management, BOM, etc...
There is no comparison. They do everything possible to help you do your job. Productivity is incredible, stress is zero. Built in checking makes it impossible to make a mistake. Imports Altium, Eagle, KiCad, Orcad, Pcad, Pads, exports to many programs. Spice netlist, etc...
PADS works fine. I wouldn't want auto-place and usually wouldn't want auto-route.
PADS can do anything in ascii files... schematic, board, library. So we can ascii export, sic an editor or a python or basic program on it, and re-import. Can other pcb programs do that?
Essentially all the parts that we use in the library are ones that we created... a thousand at least. Converting the library for another program might be messy.
We have hundreds of designs to maintain too. Best to stick with PADS.
progress:
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I fumble-fingered something and deleted a couple of the fancy ground pours and didn't notice until it was too late to undo. So I copied and pasted the pours from a previous edit.
We have a disciplined process for incremental edits and for controlling file ownership, so we drop off lots of steps. Edit B3 has the pours I needed.
Next I have to do my least-favorite part, the power pours. This board has two routing layers, two grounds, and two power planes. And a lot of supply voltages.
On fast boards like this, all the action is on layer 1, all microstrip with no fast stuff going through vias. Which means no crossovers on diff pairs.
It needs a zillion stitching vias too, to nail the L1 pours to the L2 ground plane.
I have no desire to get you to switch to DipTrace. I was describing my own experience. Yours is completely different, and you have very good reasons for wanting to stay on Pads. It makes no difference to me what software you use. However, in the interest of academic completeness, I will answer your questions.
You can place critical components and traces manually, and allow the autoplace and autoroute to complete the boring stuff.
DipTrace can export PADS SCH, and import and export PADS PCB.
True.
True.
Picosecond stuff is always demanding. I'm surprised you don't do more on Rogers, but you keep the straces short. I recall the fun you had with saucer pcbs. I'm trying to find out if Kapton flex pcb would be a suitable replacement for Rogers.
It's resequenced and done! Short of the design review and panelization. I might play with ground vias some more.
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The big chip upper-right is a $300 Hittite distributed amplifier. I invented a new, bizarre, bias servo thing optimized for pulse swing. After all, ABS MAX is not everything.
The reference designator situation is unfortunate. The tiny ones are obviously useless on the real PCB, but can be seen on a PC, either in PADS or, for manufacturing and QC, in a searchable PDF.
We'll move the sillier ref desigs to another layer so the fab house doesn't call us and complain that they are too small to print. One of the keys to pcb layout is to anticipate and avoid calls from the fab house, which slows things down.
Ref Des characters, would using less of them help? Is there a reason we must use base-10 numbers? I assume one could use base-36, so relabel "R10" as "RA", etc. regards, RS
As long as we're being cryptic, why not use a hash table; even leaving out hard-to-identify I, O, Z as being too near numeric symbols, the alphabet offers, in two-character chunks, 529 distinct labels. How many printed wiring boards have that many components?
And, you can keep the hash table, cross-reference, and algorithm in the cloud, with the right reference address for each wiring board to be printed on the board, in a suitable 2D barcode. Every robot in the factory will know more about the board than any human.
Who wants to write and sell the cellphone camera apps? One for Android, one for IOS?
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