FreeLists / si-list / [SI-LIST] Re: Layout service recommendations

[Greg Beck <gbeck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK I'm biased, but here is a summary of what works best for us.
1-Make sure your design house has DIRECT employees. If your job is farmed
outto a consultant then you will have little control over the schedule or
quality. 
2-Make sure your chosen design house uses internal procedures and training
toallow for consistent design methodology. This way if your next revision is
given to another designer, they can open your old revision and understand
what was done and why. This will reduce your time spent having to explain
again what your requirements are and why you need them. We make every effort
to keep the same designer working on new revisions.
3-Make sure your design house hires experienced designers. We average over 7
years of experience with our designers.
4-Contact the EDA software people and ask them who they recommend or check
ontheir web sites.
5-If your choice of pcb layout EDA tool is not critical, then pick a design
house that runs ALL the popular tools so they can match your
needs(complexity, cost, SI integration, etc.) to the right pcb layout tool.
6-See who is published and who is speaking at (and hosting) user groups.
These are knowledgable people willing to give back to the industry and these
people have a long term outlook.
7-Ask for CURRENT customer recommendations in industries similar to yours.
Noone is an expert in everything.
8-Ask what other services are offered IN-HOUSE at your potential design
house. If they offer full service engineering(schematics, software, testing,
documentation, FPGA design, mechanical engineering, industrial design, etc.)
then chances are they will understand your engineering requirement quite
easily. Almost everyone subcontracts pcb fabrication and assembly. If your
design house subcontracts enough of this work they MAY be able to get a
better price than you(ask if they are licensed reps for a fab or assembly
house).
9-Ask about how the design house manages it's library(i.e. do they have full
time librarians, do they offer library administration as a service). Do all
their designers use a central library? If this is not done efficiently then
you may loose time or have issues on new revisions.
10-Agree to milestones in writing before you place the purchase order. When
ECOs come up make sure you get an updated milestone report so you know
revised delivery schedules.
11-Make sure the deliverables package you get has EVERYTHING (fab, assembly,
dxf,database with library parts). You're paying for this so get it all.
Don'trely on your design house to be your "archive". If your design house
sends anything direct to your fabricator or assembler make sure they copy
youas well on the email or ftp.

Greg Beck
Optimum Design Associates
p 925.551.4155 x109
c 408.515.1070
www.optimumdesign.com[1]
gbeck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[2] >
Being almost ready to go to layout I've been thinking about the issues of
sending a design out to a service bureau instead of doing it in-house.
Unless you work for a large corporation (I don't) you might not have access
to the $100K+ EDA tools and support infrastructure (budget, bodies,
equipment, etc.) you might need to produce good designs that work "out of
the box".

My particular design is a small 5x7 in board that has a 1.5Gb/s front end
which gets deserialized and fed into FPGA's etc. Most internal frequencies
are in the 100 to 200 MHz range, with wide busses.

Is it reasonable to assume that a good layout service can get this right the
first time? What should one look for? Are there any rules-of-thumb in
terms of cost? What guarantees should one demand? What should be the
hand-off process? What's the best way to assure success?

Much like the list of recommended PCB houses, it might be nice to assemble a
list of high-speed-capable layout service houses. I'll volunteer to compile
and post to this list.

Thank you,


===============================
Martin Euredjian
eCinema Systems, Inc.
voice: 661-305-9320
fax: 661-775-4876
martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx[3]
www.ecinemasys.com[4]
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