Round One... FIGHT!

Well, not really. The first day (June 1) was nothing too intense. Mostly just getting acquainted to the place and surroundings and where my room would be, as well as meeting the people I would have to work with most. More details to come interspliced randomly later on.

Anyway, the week was relatively uneventful; I was essentially getting paid to do nothing but go through the tutorials of this new program. For anyone who is curious, PADS is a product of the Mentor Graphics company, which specializes in EDA, electronic design automation. PADS itself is actually three separate programs: Layout, Router, and Logic.

For those who care, Layout would be the one that I use most, to "lay out" the circuit boards.


Fun stuff. Actually, that was just one of the tutorial boards, not the one I was working on. It's actually relatively less complex than the one I'm working on now. The other programs, Logic and Router, aren't really used so much, even by the other engineers. Router is mainly for routing (duh?)--in other words, the circuit traces that you see up on the image above. It is a pain to do manually, which is why PADS has a program to do it automatically for you. Like any automation program, however, results don't always come out as intended aesthetically, and most people still stick with doing it themselves (including me).

As for Logic, it is the schematic editor of PADS. For any circuit board, there goes along with it a series of schematic diagrams, where the circuit is written out in a legible form. I was inclined to use this over the other program, OrCAD Capture by Cadence, since either way the schematic would eventually have to be linked over to Layout.

Unfortunately, the older engineers at the lab have been used to working with OrCAD first, then exporting over to PADS, which is a much newer program. So the schematics I received from Jim were all in OrCAD format; it's not mutually incompatible with Logic, but it was too much hassle to convert over. PADS Logic is definitely cleaner though, and I wouldn't be surprised if the engineers make a transition in the near future.

In any case, here's what OrCAD looks like.


Again, PADS Logic is pretty similar, just cleaner imo. So there you have it, the main programs with which I'm working this summer. That first week was actually pretty tough; not only was I learning how to use the programs, but I also had to learn the various terminologies and whatnot.

So after a week, with the simplest understanding of how everything worked, I was to start on my first assignment, a board that looks like this.


Oh yeah, that program happens to be CAMvu, forgot to introduce it earlier. Anyway, it's more or less something of an image viewer, allowing examination but not editing of the board. It's kinda annoying in that it's rather inflexible (maybe I just don't know how to use it well enough), but I need this as a reference as to how the original board looks like. I have the physical board too, but obviously I can't look into the inner layers of it, as CAMvu allows me to do.

In summary, I had three weapons to fight this war. The schematics for each board, which I require, provide the backbone of each board, telling how each component would be connected to each other. I have the actual boards themselves, which is useful as a real-world visual (for the outer layers anyway). And I have the CAM files, which are necessary, as Jim wanted me to do as close of a reimplementation as possible.

Details of this first battle to come.