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by mattclarkdotnet
870 days ago
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This is all so true! But it also describes the problem very well. Of course a $100k CNC machine design will always be developed by a small team collaborating as you describe. But the tools and processes that work for that most emphatically do not work well for smaller projects with more distributed contributors. Custom PCBs are so easy to order these days, but they are hellish to design and test well. That would change rapidly if we could reuse basic blocks the same way we do with code |
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Smaller projects are either handled by one or a few engineers, with each looking after one or more disciplines. I can't see collaboration on a PCB as a thing.
For example, I have personally done electrical, embedded code, FPGA and full mechanical design and manufacturing on many products that can be described as one or a few PCB's with < 1000 components. Not that hard.
I am open to the idea that I just don't have the experience in a domain where more than one engineer actively works on a single circuit board. By "actively works" I mean, simultaneous editing of portions of the PCB with the equivalent of a team leader handling pull requests, etc.
I have worked on PCB's full of analog and digital chips in the 30 x 30 cm range (12 x 12 in) entirely on my own while other engineers worked on other boards that plugged into the same backplane. I have never worked on a single board where anyone else is running simultaneous edits. The closes I have gotten to that would be a power electronics engineer "blessing" a switched mode regulator design that I then manually integrate into my work (and so do others).
So, yeah, don't know. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who regularly works in an environment where simultaneous team editing of a single PCB happens in the same manner as one might with something like VSCode and "Live Share" collaboration sessions.
Sorry, I just don't know if that proposal is realistic. Not my range of experience, which means nothing at all.