PCB Design Software

When you are creating and ordering your printed circuit boards, you naturally want to make sure that there are no hiccups in the process. You want to make sure that the designs are perfect when they are submitted so you can get your PCBs as quickly as possible.

Designing circuit boards requires an understanding of more than just circuit functionality. It also requires that you understand how the board will fit within the application, what the item will ultimately do, how heat will be dispersed within the board and throughout the environment, and a great deal more.

Surface mount technology (SMT) is a design and fabrication process that replaces the through-hole mounting of PCB (printed circuit board) components with direct placement on the printed circuit board surface. It is something that is at work in the vast majority of PCB designs tucked inside modern electronics.

When there is a need for design testing that involves a PCB, there is also a problem with timelines and costs. For example, a cheap PCB is really all that is needed to run a design, and yet a fast turnaround on a single, custom PCB can be hard to find.

PCB manufacturing requires a lot of design in advance of anything else. In fact, design and output of Gerber files are quite often the most common first step in the manufacturing process.

Printed circuit board design can be very challenging, even for the most experienced design engineers. There are many reasons a printed circuit board design can be held up in production for design rule violations, but AdvancedPCB makes it easy to find out if your design files contain possible manufacturability issues.

Gerber files are a key piece to the puzzle for manufacturing printed circuit boards. They contain all the necessary data that a PCB manufacture will require to produce the boards to your exact specifications accurately.

There are many choices for PCB design software online, but not all are created equal. PCB Artist is AdvancedPCB’s own PCB design software that was created with the sole purpose of making it easier for our customers to design and submit their custom printed circuit board files for manufacturing. The PCB design software streamlines the design process with its user-friendly interface and layout tools, including a components library of 500,000 parts.

In order for most PCB manufacturers to be able to fabricate your PCB design, Gerber files are required. Below we have listed some tips on the types of files that need to be exported from your PCB design software.