OK I like to think I have improved quite a lot on my layout skills over the last few months. I am just about to make a board up (all SMD components except for pin headers), and would just like to show you guys before I make it to see if you have any suggestions on improvements or general comments?
All pins are just signal pins except for the power and ground. The power/gnd pins are easy to spot if you see the top pin header strip is an ICSP header so from right to left it is Vpp - Vdd - Vss.
My only concern would be your traces to the IC - they appear larger than the pads. I’d either up the pad size, or shrink the trace at that point. The half step right now is not ideal, and may violate some design rules depending on the pitch of the package and your manufacturing process.
It also appears that the traces coming off the SM pads change width at their first turn. Kind of odd looking. What was the logic behind that? I’d make each trace just one width.
In a similar vein, there are a number of traces that change width. The current capacity of a given trace will be determined by it’s smallest width so it doesn’t make any sense to change the width half way through.
The ones with the changing widths slightly are just the rendered image, does look like they change width looking at it now, but they are the same size.
As for the large ones going to small, the one on the right goes large to one pin for power, and then smaller to the uC so presume thats fine… as for the others, point taken, will reduce them and also all traces to the uC pins. Thanks
Layout looks fine, so I’m just gonna be nit-picky.
There’s extra bends in the trace going to some vias and pads - for example, the 7th pad from the left on the bottom. Or the via (I’m assuming that’s a via) on the far right bottom. Or the bottom left pin of the IC. etc etc.
Additionally, no need to run traces to the pads that are in the pour. It messes up the thermals (top left pad has three thin spokes and one fat one).
None of these details are particularly important, but if you’re going for perfection…
