Technical sessions at conferences often emphasize the latest techniques and technologies, but those classes are often too in-depth for a novice designer, and don’t speak to the questions from the engineers who need to design their own boards. This class features an overview of the entire process of designing a board, from start to finish. We will begin with creating manufacturable footprints that meet the IPC specs. Then we will address some common placement techniques like floor planning, color-coding, flow, orientation, and placement to set up routing. We will follow that with a discussion of planes and stackups and how to configure them to get the best results for parts and signals. Next, we move on to some fanout and routing techniques that are helpful for completing the design connections to meet the number one design rule: good electrical performance. We will complete the process by discussing some manufacturability concerns that can be affected by the way the board is designed, some finishing issues, and sending out good documentation that the manufacturers can easily understand and use.