Designing the panel is as important as the layout of the PCB itself. When designing a PCB, often the panelization is left up to the manufacturer. Why? They are trying to optimize material usage and get as many boards on a panel and still conform to high yields and quality. In cases where larger corporations design the panel design in-house, their focus is to have better control over the entire assembly process.

There is one thing that all design engineers will agree on. Creating and gathering all the required data for a release to the PLM system is error-prone and can be a “messy”. We all understand the value of releasing our design data to the corporate PLM system, but a best practice design process dictates multiple release profiles with different purposes and different data requirements.

As design cycles condense and first pass success becomes essential the need to ensure that engineering requirements, best practices, design guidelines and lessons learned are all used to drive the PCB design becomes paramount.

Electro-Magnetic Compatibility (EMC) is typically defined as the ability of a product to function in its environment without introducing electromagnetic disturbance.