In 1980 I worked for an advanced R&D electronics company that produced datasets and switches from initial paper napkin design, to engineering prototypes, to full on production manufacturing. One of my roles was to design the printed circuit board layout, commonly referred to in the biz as the
artwork. I did this by laying down various decals on a transparent Mylar sheet that represented where the electronic components would go and then I would lay down traces (red and blue tape for a double-sided board) which represents the electrical connection between components.
I used an electronic circuit schematic diagram to read the electrical connections and mark off each trace that I put down on the layout design (i.e. artwork). The scale was 4 times the size of the physical printed circuit board that the design would eventually become copper traces and the physical components would get plugged into the board and soldered.
From a process perspective, I had to shoot a negative (or positive) of the finished Mylar printed circuit board layout design that was reduced by 4 times. This positive was then physically laid on a flat solid layer copper printed circuit board template that was photosensitive, so that under a UV light, the board was exposed and then the board had the photographic imprint of the design on it. The exposed board is submerged into a caustic chemical soup that would etch away the copper on the board except where it was exposed by the positive. I end up with a printed circuit board as a replica of what was on the positive design, Mylar layout design and ultimately the circuit diagram, with no loss in translation. Next hand-drill the holes in the printed circuit board and load it up with all of the electronic components, which I soldered in. Finally, mounting the board in its case and voila, a finished prototype ready for testing.
The printed circuit board layouts I designed had some 200 electronic components including a microprocessor, many ICs and several analog components plus hundreds of traces. It took about 8 weeks of effort times 8 hour days to actually layout a circuit design of this size and complexity. Then it took a few days to get the positive shot, another week or so to get the board etched and another week or so before you had the board masked, drilled, parts loaded, soldered and it was in the test rack in the lab.
In 1980, this was a manual labor intensive process, working at a light table for almost 2 months straight. Add another month to finish prototype. Kinda reminds me of the process of developing modern day software prototypes.
And then in 1982, a specialized computer arrived at my desk with a
Computer Aided Design (CAD) program for designing printed circuit board layouts. It did not replace my job. Instead I became a computer operator that required specialized domain knowledge (i.e. printed circuit board layout design). It took a while to figure it all out, but it did reduce my manual effort from 8 weeks down to a couple of days. This was a significant productivity increase that I gladly welcomed.
You programmed the CAD application by entering in your electronic components (mported from a Bill of Materials list with some metadata) and then drawing the traces (actually using a light pen to touch one component lead to another on a graphical display) and the computer would figure out the width of the trace based on how much current was required (if you loaded Bill of Materials metadata) and auto-routed the trace in the most efficient way by trying hundreds of combinations and rearranging other traces, each time a trace sequence was inputted
What does this mean? It means that the level of abstraction for solving this particular problem was raised significantly with the introduction of a highly specialized CAD program. Measuring my involvement with this technology using the
Technology Adoption Curve, I would be classified as an early adopter of this innovative and disruptive technology according to Geoffrey Moore. This technology approach radically changed the way printed circuit board layouts were designed thereafter.
Today, some 25 years later, printed circuit boards are still laid out requiring humans to develop the design, but the level of abstraction and automation is unbelievable. One only has to investigate the
ASIC world to see how industrialized this industry has truly become. We have abstracted this specialized process so much that major chunks of designs are reused and assembled from massive libraries built upon standards. This is how mature this industry is. Back to the printed circuit board design, the standards based CAD output file is directly interpreted by a
Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) device that can output a completely etched, masked, drilled printed circuit board with parts placed by robotics and wave soldered, all in a matter of minutes.
At that time in the 80s I saw various parts of the electronics engineering design and manufacturing world go through a small industrial revolution with these highly specialized CAD CAM technologies that have now evolved to the point where DVD players are $30.00. Who would have guessed? It was not that long ago that an
HP-41c calculator was $600.
Following opportunities in the electronics design industry, I got into the