Time for a Reality Check...

If all you know about board design is what you've found here, you still need help! The material presented so far in this introduction is only deep enough to get your feet wet, we've barely scratched the surface.

Don't Panic!

You are not alone. No one was born knowing how to design circuit boards; We all had to learn the same things you are learning now. Fortunately, there are a lot of resources available to you. FREE resources! So do yourself a favor and check these out:

A QUICK NOTE ABOUT PRIVACY:
To take advantage of most of these services, you will have to provide an email address. Before giving your personal email address to everyone out there, you may want to consider opening a seperate email account for circuit board related activities. I find it much easier to keep my personal mail separated from my career, and I am more willing to share this address in public. You never know what opportunities may arise if people can find you, right? So here's mine, if you need to contact me: pcbjack@gmail.com
OK, here are a few places you shouldn't be afraid to join...

FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS

Printed Circuit Design & Fab
and Circuits Assembly Magazine

Three UPmedia magazines have now been combined into a single publication that is a MUST READ for our industry. FREE! Subscribe today at THIS LINK. You will probably get something sooner if you subscribe to the DIGITAL edition (which comes to your email automatically, is easier to store/search for future reference, and saves trees and lots of other wasteful practices).
When you are filling out the subscription form, you may also want to check the box for the PCB Update newsletter, which is an email that is delivered almost every day. It is primarily business news about our industry, but often contains links to good articles for designers.
While you are waiting for your first copy, you can read the current issues and many of the back-issues HERE

PCB007
and SMT Magazine

The iConnect007 series is a portal to just about everything happening in the circuit board industry, sub-divided into PCB DESIGN007, PCB007 (I wish they had called it "FAB007"), and EMS007 and now has recently acquired SMT Magazine. They also publish customized digital newsletters for FLEX designers, MILITARY/AEROSPACE and readers in CHINA. You can subscribe to any or ALL of these publications HERE

And last but not least, their RealTime Video interviews and coverage of industry conferences is a real benefit to us all.

CircuiTree Magazine

CircuiTree is more PCB-business-oriented than PCB-design-oriented, but publishes many articles that are useful for designers and is well worth the price (FREE!). Here's an online SUBSCRIPTION FORM You can read articles from the current issue HERE, and back-issues are stored in their DIGITAL ARCHIVE
CircuiTree also published a Design for Manufacturability ebook.

to be continued...

NOTE FROM JACK:
Some day I'll sit down finish listing the subscriptions and reference sites that I consider essential for any circuit board designer...

... but I don't have time right now.

In the meantime, I'll just plop my personal "PCB portal" in here. It has some great stuff, some out-dated stuff (and probably some broken links), but it's still worth exploring!

(Thanks to publishers, authors, reporters and bloggers for keeping us in the loop)