Week 06. Electronics Design
From blinking LEDs to borderline wizardry - here goes one week of electronics design! 🚀✨

Assignments
group assignment:
use the test equipment in your lab to observe the operation
of a microcontroller circuit board
link to group assignment.
individual assignment:
use an EDA tool to design a development boardthat uses parts from the inventory to interact
and communicate with an embedded microcontroller
extra credit: try another design workflow
extra credit: simulate your design
extra credit: design a case around your design
Electronics Design
I decided to use Eagle in Autodesk Fusion as ny EDA tool of choice as I already have it installed on my computer.
this weeks reading list
Getting started with electronics by Forrest M. Mims, III.
Eagle Tutorial I found this tutorial on Bo Heather Bowmans site in the electronis design week section.
I decided to keep working in Autodesk Fusion as I already had it installed and know the user interface –
even though I know this will be on a whole new level!! Eagle is what electronics design was/is known as inside Autodesk Fusion – Fusion is always being updated so some of the older tutorial videos linked below things may be in different places but it still should work the same – for example Electronics design can now be accessed from the workspace menu in Autodesk Fusion – this just happened in a recent update.

I made a variation of Adrian Torres Fab XIAO dev board as I will be working with the XIAO-RP2040 or the XIAO - ESP32 C3 in my final project – not sure which yet!! But also because I needed something to follow as I'm not really sure how to design a PCB… I need something to follow.
My first attempt.
Open Autodesk Fusion – from the workspace drop down select >Electronics > New Electronics design.



This will bring you into a new Tab – there will be a lot of jumping between tabs here and it can get a little frustrating..





After creating the PCB design workspace, in the Create tap, select Create PCB – I think I selected Create associative PCB – Select the design you want it associated with, and it will then push it to the electronics design tabs.




I need to add a polygon on the back layer making it the GND signal.


When adding a Via make sure you select a single name, in this case, GND. Otherwise, the via will be isolated from the ground net on the bottom plane.








Exporting the Gruber files for milling… let’s try to figure this out!!
Selected the manufacture tab (within 2d PCB layout) Select1. the cam preview button
2. then select each button at the bottom 2, 3, and 4 first two export DXF and PNG respectively the CAM button will be



That didn’t work so I selected export in the bottom right

Think that will export separate files.

Select the upper Level Gerber
And press process in the bottom right.

Zip archive will be saved to the selected folder – I must have selected this earlier – make sure it is going somewhere you can find it – Fusion has a habit of sending files to some buried folder you might never find…

Issues I’ve encountered
AGHHHHH
Too many to mention….Very frustrating getting the hang of electronics design with a lot of jumping between tabs, - 2d and 3d views and pushing parts to and from these.
There is a significant amount of information overload in the various menus that can make it difficult to find things – persistence is key. It’s quite rewarding when you figure something out for yourself is quite key!!.
Learning Outcomes
a lot about PCB design and how to use Eagle to design a PCB.