If im honest I got thrown in at the deep end with this area! I hadn't continued my own personal research building up to design a PCB board and should have made more time not just to play around with circuit wizard but start creating something which worked properly as I had planned. Towards the end of the Systems and control module I had to create a PCB board for my transistors (immediately!)! Therefore had to just open up circuit wizard and just work out how to do it, fortunately another student was doing an identical board and also had no experience of circuit wizard so joined forces.
What was good about this type of 'learning'
What was bad about this learning?
What I gained knowledge wise from this task?
What was good about this type of 'learning'
- I couldn't avoid it, the PCB had to be designed or my product would flop!
- Had another student to collaborate with and share the pressure
- Learning by doing/investigating/first hand experience
What was bad about this learning?
- Pressure to get the task completed
- Some parts of the design happened by accident and didn't have time to go over and check i understood what i did for future reference
- It was a sink or swim situation and risked ruining my product due to lack of experience.
What I gained knowledge wise from this task?
- circuit wizard gives different views of the board and what it would look like with all the components soldered on, which was very helpful later on as i simple had to copy
- Good practice in design! Ensuring the circuit board is important BUT it is also necessary to ensure the design of the board is tidy and not unnecessarily complicated.