Tips for designing PCB (connected to copper tracks)

[coolchip]

tips for designing pcbs

I'm not aiming to be a pro in pcb design, just want to design few pcbs for few project involving a PIC with 20Mhz crystal and large no. of components(transistors cap res etc)
I have few doubts :
1. Should I have unconnected copper tracks in between the actual layout or will they induce noise as they are floating?
2. What precautions should be taken for drawing ground copper tracks ?

Kindly add more tips.

 

[philba]

Tips for designing PCB

I'm not sure what you mean by unconnected tracks. If you mean unconnected copper, you are right, they will capacitively couple so you should either remove them or connect them to ground.

Ideally, you would do a multilayer board and have one layer be a ground plane. However, you may not have that luxury and, frankly, for a 20 mhz PIC design it isn't necessary. I try to have all unused areas on the PCB have grounded copper. It's a good idea to try to have a "star" configuration for the ground - i.e. avoid differential ground path lengths. But, again, your boards will probably not be that critical.

a quick few other tips. use lots of bypass caps, isolate noise producing sections from clock, analog and digital signal paths, don't parallel long signal runs.

If you are making the boards yourself, don't forget that you won't have plated though holes.

 

[sihuijian]

Tips for designing PCB

By the way ,If you need a emulator to debug your MCU,you should consider how to connect them in the PCB,and place some test points for logic analyzer.

 

[mayu_wakui]

Tips for designing PCB

at times, space could be a bit tight, so u could 'stitch' 2 layers of gnd plane..this is mostly done by placing vias to connect a plane on one side of a board to the other (assuming its a simple double layer)..

 

[sugvivek]

Re: Tips for designing PCB

If I understand correctly...pls remove ur unconnected copper lines or connect to the ground and stitch vias.. surely..unconnected coppers will create noise

 

[wizpic]

Re: Tips for designing PCB

here i came across this on another forum and not sure if it has already been up loaded here berfore it gave me plenty of tips

hope this helps wizpic

 

[pcb87]

Re: Tips for designing PCB

hiii

check this ..

 

[crazygrey]

Tips for designing PCB

awesome documents, thanks very much