PCB drawing skills and software (RE: Self Resonant SSTC boards COMP LETE)

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: Marco.Denicolai-at-tellabs-dot-com 

Hi Brian,

It depends on what your PCB is for. If you are working with high
currents (say > 10A) or steep transitions (read high frequencies) not
even the Mentor Graphics software we use at my work can help you. You
have to manually route critical traces and you have to know _yourself_
the proper way of doing it (minimize stray inductance, avoid ground
loops, etc.).

Space (that is "clearance" in PCB dialect) and thickness ("width" in PCB
dialect) are easy to be managed by the PCB drawing software itself, even
if often you have to switch to manual mode and correct even those things
yourself.

Moral: if you know what you are doing, even Eagle is fine. If you don't,
no software on the market will possibly save you. Sad but true.

But...You can always read about these things, it's not black magic. And
experience makes the master (we got this motto in Finland).

Best Regards

 > Original poster: Brian Salvo <teslacoiler666-at-prodigy-dot-net>
 >
 > Hey, I got a dumb question!
 > Is there a way for me to design PCBs if I don't know how to
 > design PCBs???
 > Is there some kind of software out there that will do the
 > thinking for me
 > and spit out a PCB layout if I feed it a schematic? It would
 > have to be
 > intelligent enough to know how thick to make the traces for
 > the current,
 > and would have to know the voltages present to allow for
 > proper spacing I
 > assume.