“The process is this. Initial exposure to the software tool and the PCB design process. No notes. You just run through it. It’s to expose oneself to the process. It’s so to get the brain used to the new experience. Because the brain’s used to that new experience, you’re not going to pick up necessarily all the details.
You need to get re-exposed in a second project. So now your brain’s overcoming the overwhelm of the new thing. You do a more in-depth project that focuses on design for manufacturing and embeds the PCB learning process that you would use for industry. Skip signal integrity, skip component selection.
In the third module, we focus on understanding all the root problems of signal integrity, and how to solve them. Then we do exercises to solve each specific one, and do a third project focusing only on signal integrity on a 10-layer PCB.
The fourth project, they learn high-speed digital design. We teach the theory, and then we have them do a board that incorporates all the high-speed aspects.
The fifth project, they do a power electronics project, so now they can understand PDN analysis.
Finally, their sixth project is a comp a more complex DDR3 board, moderately complex intermediate, where they now need to incorporate component selection and everything they learned prior.
By this time, they don’t know how they got the confidence to design this board, but now they just have it because of the domain learning process. I call this the MESH method to PCB design – Designing for manufacturing, Electromagnetism, Signal integrity, High-speed digital design.”
Kirsch Mackey in Trace Talks EP 2 on AI and PCB design