March 11, 2003, Ramona Cone

Today I am working on making a footprint in PCBoards for our DC/DC converter. That is the last part that needs to be added to my schematic design. Then I can go to the layout software and route the traces. I am hoping to get this design sent off before Spring Break next week. I realized that I don't have the right specification sheet. I found one at the company's web site below.

MeanWell DC/DC converter specification sheet

I had problems getting my footprint to save in my custom library. Turned out that the problem was that I had too many characters in my footprint name. The name needs to have less than 9 characters in it so no errors occur. Once I got all parts laid out in PSPICE I had a few warnings and errors to correct. Then I ran PCBoards software from PSPICE tools menu. I had a 50 pin header show up for each pin connection I was using. To solve this I needed to edit each header pin (see figure below). Each PGKREF=P1 and then the GATE= needed to be set to the pin that it should be connected to on the board.

Figure 1. Part Attribute window.

After correcting all the HDR PKGREF and GATE assignements, I was in the PCB layout editor and realized that I needed more descriptive labels on the components in the schematic. I was having a hard time determining which parts went with which section. When you have 20 resistors and they are all labeled R1, R2, R3, etc. it is difficult to determine where they should be placed and what other components that they are connected to.

Note: Remeber to add fuses to design

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