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Drive Your PCB Design Career
January 16, 2008 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
It's not easy being a PCB designer, even in the best of times. Your career choices can lead you down a rocky road, or a smooth boulevard. In today's globally competitive world, continuing your design training and education should be considered key elements of your career plan.
Fortunately, there are a plethora of options that can help you stay at the top of your design game.
Your local chapter of the IPC Designers Council is a great place to start. The Designers Council is devoted to improving the educational opportunities for PCB designers. The DC is one IPC activity whose members are individuals, not companies. Since its formation meeting in 1992, the DC has grown to over 1,100 designers in the U.S. and abroad. Meanwhile, 3,500 designers have received Certified Interconnect Designer (CID) or Advanced Certified Interconnect Designer (CID +) certification.
Joining your local DC chapter will cost you $50 each year, but you'll receive a coupon for that value when you receive your annual membership card. This can be applied to attendance at major design conferences and workshops, or used for offsetting the cost of IPC standards.
Attending regular DC meetings allows you to network with your peers while discussing and questioning trends in PCB design. You will have the opportunity to interact with design experts; members are usually open to sharing key techniques. Designers like to help other designers.
This network of members and associates is one of your best resources.
Because the DC is open to a larger audience than just the PCB designer, consider inviting your co-workers, engineers, supervisors and others on your management team to a meeting. This is a great way to enhance your team's perception of good PCB design practices.
Local DC chapters sometimes sponsor "Lunch & Learn" training sessions. These events feature presentations on design techniques, and attendees leave with either a soft or hard copy of the presentation for future reference. This allows designers to refresh their information quickly when the need arises.
The DC is one component of your continuing design education. You may also have to travel to technical conferences or attend classes related to your specific software tools.
Annually, there are several technical conferences that may improve your design education. At these conferences, sessions usually include a cross-section of the current technology and state-of-the-art design techniques. If you go, take time attend the keynote addresses - these often contain information about technologies coming down the road.
Technical conferences can provide designers with useful, up-to-date information, but paying for these classes can be a challenge. Some employers will invest in your training, while others will not. As an advancing designer, you will need to determine how much you personally want to invest in your career.
In the meantime, try teaming up with the more advanced members of your design team and learning all you can from them. Also, take time to interview the engineers in your group. Focus your training plans upon areas that will help you master your company's specific designs.
In addition to live conferences and classes, you can find classes online, along with posted articles that explain specific design techniques. Often, instructors will avail themselves to you via e-mail to answer your questions.
If you want to take your design training to the next level, consider getting your CID or CID+. The certification tests and workshops are offered around the world through IPC and their local DC chapters. During the workshops, PCB design, fabrication and assembly standards are developed with all levels of design skills in mind. Reference points are highlighted throughout each standard to guide the user to the specific details necessary to answer design, fabrication and assembly questions.
Other resources for designers can be found on the DC's Web site, http://dc.ipc.org. Information is currently available on topics including lead-free, halogen-free, standards revisions and more.
I encourage all of you to get involved in your local DC chapter. As past president of the Pacific Northwest DC chapter, I can tell you that helping to run a chapter is both challenging and fun. Your local DC group requires alert leaders who can assist with training, organization, recruitment, and more.
So, attend the next meeting at your local DC chapter. Attend as many live and online technical conferences as you can. Do whatever it takes to stay current in your design education.
Then, hang on - you will be in for the ride of your life on the PCB designer highway.
Ruth Delker is the immediate past president of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the IPC Designers Council.