How to decide what components to place in a design ?

[dp_ee]

Hi,

Can any one recommend me a book or other reference that teaches about designing all kinds of circuit e.g. pci cards, backplanes, routers, etc... at the beginner level.

I would like to know how people decide what capacitors, inductors, resistors to place...where and why. Basically, I wanna be able to look at a motherboard or any circuit board and determine why the original designers chose such components.

I am an EE student therefore I am aware of basic circuit theory, signal processing, etc. Unfortunately, thus far, I have not been taught of how to build anything useful i school.

Thanks

 

[taranisattack]

Re: How to design?

Hi,

Can any one recommend me a book or other reference that teaches about designing all kinds of circuit e.g. pci cards, backplanes, routers, etc... at the beginner level.

I would like to know how people decide what capacitors, inductors, resistors to place...where and why. Basically, I wanna be able to look at a motherboard or any circuit board and determine why the original designers chose such components.

I am an EE student therefore I am aware of basic circuit theory, signal processing, etc. Unfortunately, thus far, I have not been taught of how to build anything useful i school.

Thanks

How to design stuff? Look at application notes, research existing systems, books on the the thing you want to design. EE courses don't teach you how to design everything, and then reverse engineer it, what you describe is really only going to be achieved by doing lots of research on existing designs, and then you'll recognise things on circuits that you've seen in previous circuits, and have a good idea of what they do. Books on laying out PCBs are in the library at your uni. As for motherboards, they are multilayer, so its questionable how much you'd be able to find out by looking at it in terms of track layout.

 

[eem2am]

Re: How to design?

start small and build up

but do you mean analog circuits...or programming of micros?

if analog, start with the babani analog books such as 555 circuits etc.

babani is king.

get your self a grad level book and you'll be staring at it for a long time wondering what planet you are on

 

[hafeez]

Re: How to design?

Try to design small level circuits, chanigng the Values of discrete components, see the action performed by that... Almost and any u need to do some reverse engineering of parts u dnt used to now. Believe in ur self, afterall discrete components are just the stuff used to decorate the overall design, not kinda of LED work......
But it controls the overall voltage and current circulation, build urself with these component basic, then build urself with teh component they are connected to, ant thats it.....!

 

[mribble]

Re: How to design?

I agree with the other suggestions to start small and build up. If search with google you will find some help too.