I have been designing printed circuit boards since 1984. From my 1st board, and those boards that followed during the next 5 years or so were all hand taped working with layers of mylar, and crape tape all at 2X the actual sized board. Thankfully the days of hand layout are long gone, and I’ve been designing layouts with various programs that run on the PC for the last several years. While I don’t get many requests anymore to do single layer designs, I do regularly work on 2 layer and multi-layer boards.
If you are thinking about hiring me to do your PC layout work only, there is one thing can I offer that very few other PC design houses can’t: A layout that will be placed and routed with the eye of an experienced analog power designer behind the controls. In many cases you will not need to have the day to day interaction with me to guide the routing as you see fit: I will just route it in a logical way to optimize the function of the circuit on the board. I think you will be very pleased with the results. I am just the guy to optimally place and route your layout, on any design that has sensitive signal level analog circuits on it, and/or high-power high-frequency switching circuits, where low distortion, low noise, and low radiated emissions are paramount.
I will provide you with a comprehensive database of files that will allow your board fabricator to build your board, your PCB assembler to effectively stuff your board in prototype and production, and you to effectively document the fabrication of your assembly with detailed assembly drawings.
For the last several years I have been using the Mentor Graphics Products Pads Powerlogic and Pads PowerPCB:
https://www.pads.com/standard/try.html?pid=mentor
I own a license to the latest release (VX1.2) to the “Standard Plus” package.
I also own copies of Pads 2007.4 and Pads9.4 so I can do work for customers that have not upgraded their software (and related libraries) to the latest version of the software.
I have included a quick snapshot example of one of my latest layouts, a 500W / 500W class-D amplifier:
The latest VX1.2 software also offers a new option that the old software did not: The ability to output a 3D step file that will interface with your company’s 3D mechanical Cad software: A final sanity check and sign-off on the layout can be performed by your mechanical engineer in your 3D workup of the products mechanical design. Having this capability will greatly reduce the possibility of having a mechanical inference in the product prototype.
A 3D PDF file output is also readily available from the software, perhaps useful for a preliminary product brochure but beyond that, likely very little value other than just looking cool:
