As the saying goes, “The master leads you to the door, and the practice depends on yourself.” For PCB design beginners, it is easy to “have no direction, don’t know where to start, and be confused.” Therefore, if you can get some guidance and suggestions from masters, you will definitely benefit a lot. Next, 2PCB has collected and sorted out some suggestions from hardware masters on knowledge reserves and learning directions for PCB design engineers, hoping to help everyone.
Knowledge reserve
As an excellent PCB design engineer, you should have the following knowledge architecture:
1. Be familiar with at least one mainstream EDA tool in the industry, such as Allegro.
2. Be familiar with various devices, understand circuit schematics, and recognize key signals.
3. Be familiar with the processes and processes of several commonly used boards and circuit board factories.
4. Be familiar with the assembly process and process of patch plug-ins.
5. Be familiar with welding tests.
6. Have a certain understanding of SI/PI knowledge.
7. Have a deep understanding of EMC/EMI knowledge of the PCB of the designed product.
Some suggestions
1. A qualified PCB engineer should first have the spirit of hard work, good communication and summarization. Learn to ask for advice from seniors and communicate more with peers.
2. Technology requires long-term accumulation and precipitation, so it takes more time and energy, and you must be able to endure loneliness.
3. You can pay more attention to some forums with large traffic and the dynamics of industry leaders, and participate in their activities and training, whether online or offline. It is very beneficial to improve your technical professional level and career planning. In addition, participating in more offline activities and training, and making more friends in the industry will help expand your horizons and network resources.
4. When necessary, find a reliable training class or teacher, they will directly teach you their accumulated experience over the years, and self-study will take many detours and spend more time.
5. Find your own technical route, and then keep thinking, learning, accumulating, and precipitating.
6. It is best to make the PCB design project you learned into several physical objects for verification.
7. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, be more hands-on, and be patient.
8. Read more information about circuit principles.
9. For junior engineers, it is recommended to study in depth in a single field, such as PCB design, SI simulation, thermal design, EMC design, product testing, etc., and then expand your knowledge horizontally based on your advantage.
10. For senior engineers, if you want to take up a management position, you need to strengthen your learning in project management, communication skills, team management, etc., and you also need to strengthen the comprehensiveness of hardware knowledge at the same time. After all, no one wants to be a layman leading an expert.
Application ability
From the perspective of recruitment requirements, the most important abilities for applicants are nothing more than the following:
1. Professional and technical ability, which is the basic ability required for engaging in specific industries and positions.
2. Professional spirit, this is relatively broad, but it is the most important reference for a company to select and stay employees. There are many specific manifestations, such as: workplace mentality, sense of responsibility, values, and many other aspects.
3. Communication and collaboration skills. In today’s workplace, there are few things that can be accomplished alone, so teamwork, communication and collaboration skills will be essential skills for career development.
4. Continuous learning ability. The rapid development of the electronics industry requires us to maintain continuous learning and improvement, otherwise we will soon be eliminated by the industry. Therefore, continuous and independent learning ability is also a very important requirement for high-quality talents.
PCB design work is a professional and technical job that combines professional electronic technology, manufacturing process technology, design and compromise art, etc. It is a very critical R&D link that turns electronic products from abstract circuit schematics into visible and tangible products. With the popularization and application of high-speed circuits in recent years, it has become more and more important. It is an indispensable and important position in the modern electronic product R&D team.