Schematic Capture
This is a strange rant I'm queuing up.This is about circuit design and the process both before and after it.The general process of making a circuit board that's all populated and ready to buy goes kind of like this:
- Come up with an idea
- Draft of circuit idea
- Schematic (sometimes on a napkin)
- Choose components
- Prototyping
- Enter schematic in a design tool
- Board layout
- Spin board and populate
- Testing
- If you need to go back to step 2
Eventually you'll finish. (if you're lucky)The issue I have is that going from 4 to 7 many times you have not one, but a number of similar components to choose from. Even beyond that, sometimes the same component comes in different packages.Of all the tools I've been dicking around with there seems to be a bit of an inversion. You need to pick a package before you drop the part on your schematic. This isn't as much of an issue with a lot of ICs, but when you get to passives or jellybean ICs you have choices. Unless you have other design constraints, if you spec out a 1nF cap, you can get that in any number of different sizes.Why do you have to artificially constrain that at schematic capture time?!sigh