How Do You Calculate The PCB Design Time

how do you calculate the pcb design time?
Yohan Prez-MoretHead of Hardware Department en Tecno InspecTop Contributor

When you face an electronic design, how do you calculate the design time? Everyone
wants a good, cheap and fast design. Three months is a long time for a four-layer PCB,
based on FPGA, ADs, RAMs? Thank you for sharing your experiences.
20 comments Jump to most recent comment
Csaba Vgh
RMA technician lead at National Instruments Hungary Ltd.
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If you ask me, this depend on your experience. :-)

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8 days ago
Cindy K. likes this
wheelee
wheelee palacios
Engineer, PCB Section at Solar Wide Industrial Ltd.
as long as the ME & EE design are already 100% complete & no revisions along the way then
you can calculate the PCB design time & as Csaba pointed out it would depend on the
designers experience & competence.
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Most of the delays comes from sch revisions or incomplete mechanical drawing wherein the
ID guys cant decide where to place the I/O ports etc.
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7 days ago
Cindy K. likes this
Gerry
Gerry Murray
Electronics Engineer at Thales
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From working on lots of different projects over the years, I've found that something I read in
'Electronics Times' 20 years ago is so true: make your best estimate of the time you expect
the task to take then double it and add 10%. I don't know why, but it works every time for
me.
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7 days ago
John V., Yohan P. and 3 others like this
Yohan
Yohan Prez-Moret
Head of Hardware Department en Tecno Inspec
Top Contributor
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Thanks for sharing your views. I always suggest me keep track of my time, but then with the
dynamics of work, I leave that aside. I do not know if anyone has done a study to find a
correlation between the number of components and PCB design time. Of course, that would
be modulated by the designer's experience. For now I'll try to list the designs I have created
and see if there is any relationship between the runtime and the number of parts and PCB
area .... The rule suggests Gerry Murray is good, and I think it will always work because it has
a very high safety factor to comply with time. Thanks again for your views and especially for
your time!
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7 days ago
James
James Jackson, CID
PCB Designer at McDonald Technologies
I looked into this many years ago, and came up with an algorithm that I eventually put into a
VB program (PCB2Est) that I have used for almost 25 years now. The program is meant to be
a 'quick' estimate, and I use it to provide my manager with a time estimate (that he then
uses in his gantt chart for his estimate).
I have found my program is consistently accurate to about 10%. It calculates schematic
capture (not as accurately as I would like) and the PCB layout time (fairly accurate).
I have it broken down into options for the types of layouts - I.E. New desigh, rework or regen
design (which involves recreating designs from gerbers or less info).
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My program is not free, but it is available to anyone interested.

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6 days ago
wheelee P., Yohan P. like this
istvan
istvan nagy
Principal Hardware Engineer at Fortinet
First measure the design size with number of components in the new (and not re-used)
portion of the schematics. Then based on that we can calculate working hours.
Design time for me:
Schematics: 0.066 hour/component
PCB layout: 0.188 hour/component
Bring-up to 99% functional level: same as schematics design time, 0.066 hour/component
Most people I met have the bring-up time 2x-10x that much, due to severe bugs and many
re-spins.
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For my past several designs these numbers are closely accurate, for different size designs in
the range of 400-7000 components. So I use this for project planning.
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6 days ago
Yohan P., John V. and 1 other like this
Probir
Probir Debnath
Director, Ceda
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Divide the entire JOB into sections. Figure out what is the kind of experience or skill level each
of the executives they have. Beside this whoever is handling the project the project head or
the project manager should know the entire flow from scratch to the end design to visualize
this can be achieved in X number of days. Consult with your executives and set a realistic
deadline like holidays in between, someone may take leave etc. That becomes your Design
Time
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6 days ago
Pentti
Pentti Kartano
Pcb designer
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I think Istvans method is good, but I think that counting time as hours/component is too
coarse, because component pincount can be from 1-pin testpoint to over thousand pins BGA.
It is much more accurate if You count time as minutes/component pin.
Of course You must have factors dependig how complex your desing is and what designers
experience is. One way to estimate complexity in pcb-layout is to count pins/area ratio.
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6 days ago
Suhail
Suhail Azim
Design Coordinator/Sr. PCB Design Engineer at Test Tooling Solutions (M) Sdn. Bhd.
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It depends on your expertise & experience as said above. I estimate design time mainly on
below factors:
Board size & number of components.
BGA/Device pincount & critical signals to be routed like LVDS, Serdes, RFsignals etc.
Number of power supplies & split planes.
Number of Layers.
Below is an interesting link that you may consider.
http://www.analoghome.com/articles/AN003_Altium_Estimator.pdf
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6 days ago
Ivan
Ivan Holm
Hardware PCB Layout design, with MCU CPLDFPGA. Optimisng and Debug in
Embedded C and C# Testing USB .Contact Me
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it also depends how many you want to produce after, for if you only want to have a simple
design, and not so many Print, and only make this product once. You properly don't want to
spend lot of time.... but if you have a complex or simple design. That you want to produce in
many year, then you want to cut down on the production expensive. and make a good PCB
from the start wit good test application debugging opportunities. If you do that the time for
designing the product, is worth the money on that project.
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4 days ago
Abbas V. likes this
Abbas
Abbas Vahedi
Electrical- Electronic Engineer
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your question has 2 Parts!

1- "When you face an electronic design, how do you calculate the design time? "
2- "Three months is a long time for a four-layer PCB, based on FPGA, ADs, RAMs?"
My answers are:
1- when I face an PCB design, First of all I estimate level of job and level of quality that my
client has got expect,second of all size of board and type of component is important, next of
that RF and number of layers and ... restriction is flashing for me, after those I guess how
long of my time spend on it, finally I multiply that time into X2.5 and add 10% into final time.
2- It depend on your agility in PCB design, your minutes/component pin (if you disregard
schematic) and your scrupulosity!!!!!.For me, three months with schematic design, regular
number components and my scrupulosity it is usual time!
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4 days ago
Ivan H. likes this
Robert
Robert Feranec
a Motherboard designer and founder of Online Schematic & PCB Design Courses at
FEDEVEL Academy
It depends on too many factors. What we do, we track the time of our designs and we can
quite acuratelly estimate then any similar designs.
Simple estimation (SCH & PCB Design, doesnt include any software development or
debugging):
* Simple boards: 50h (2 weeks)
* Not difficult boards: 250h ( 10weeks)
* Diffciult boards (Memories, High speed, a lot of components, limited in size): more then
450h (18 weeks and more)
Note: calculated as 5 hours a day, 5 days a week
If you are interested, here are some of our timesheets and graphs with detailed description:
* x86 board design:
http://www.fedevel.com/welldoneblog/2013/08/x86-custom-board-design-how-long-it-takes/
* Freescale Computer on module (Junior engineer):
http://www.fedevel.com/welldoneblog/2013/11/how-long-it-takes-a-junior-engineer-to-designan-advanced-board/
* Baseboard for a Computer on Module:
http://www.fedevel.com/welldoneblog/2014/03/how-long-it-takes-to-design-a-baseboard-forcomputer-on-module/
* TI Computer on Module
http://www.fedevel.com/welldoneblog/2011/07/do-you-know-how-long-schematic-design-andpcb-layout-take/
There is a big difference between designing a very first prototype and variants of an existing
board. Also, size, component/track/via density, PCB technology influence the time a lot.
Hope it helps,
Robert
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4 days ago
Abbas V., wheelee P. and 2 others like this

Andrew
Andrew Dutton
Technical manager ( Director ) at Delta-T Devices Ltd | Environmental sensors |
Loggers | Meterology
My mantra on this is, past performance s the best predictor of future performance. Think of a
similar design you have done in the past, consider any extra complexity in the new design
that might add time or if it is a rework of an existing design you might be ale shave a bit off.
Remember how much time it took to check it and rework errors found, this is unlikely to get
better. I usually recon on 2- 3 weeks checking a complex design by the time you have found
the errors fixed them and generated CAM data and checked that as well.
I guess a design house should be able to do this faster but they are only any good for well
defined problems where you can give clear directions. If the design is high speed and needs a
high level of design input to consider return currents and crosstalk its usually better to have
the design engineer lay it out even if it is a bit slower as they get up to speed on the CAD
tools.
Regards,
Andy
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4 days ago
Cindy K., Yohan P. like this
Probir
Probir Debnath
Director, Ceda
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Do not forget to list out complexity and iterations involved. Do keep a buffer time for ECO - I
have seen most of the design needs a last minute changes from the Clients
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4 days ago
wheelee
wheelee palacios
Engineer, PCB Section at Solar Wide Industrial Ltd.
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also add lead time & routing time

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3 days ago

Abbas
Abbas Vahedi
Electrical- Electronic Engineer
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Robert Feranec
your experience and data about your design are so interesting.
I read your links carefully and I am using your chart on my projects...
Thank you indeed for your information...
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3 days ago
Brian
Brian Lavery
Engineering Manager at Buzz Products Pty Ltd and supporting Movember
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Roberts answer is a good one but for someone without history of previous designs it is
difficult to estimate. You allso need to be clear about exactly what you mean. If you are
including testing the board then this is especially hard to estimate. Make your best guess and
track how close you were. Then improve your estimating on future designs.
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3 days ago
Robert
Robert Feranec
FEDEVEL Academy
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Abbas, glad to help :) Not many companies tracks the work into details as we do and it is
sometimes very interesting to see the numbers. Maybe it will help also some other people.
Sometimes it is a big difference between what you think how much time you have spent by
doing something and the real time.
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2 days ago
Abbas V. likes this
Yohan
Yohan Prez-Moret
Head of Hardware Department en Tecno Inspec
Top Contributor
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Robert Feranec, Thanks for sharing your great experience. I 'm checking the links you posted,
very interesting. I'll use it as a model in my work.
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2 days ago
Robert
Robert Feranec
FEDEVEL Academy
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Thank you. I am very happy you found it useful :)

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2 days ago

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how do you calculate the pcb design time?

Yohan Prez-MoretHead of Hardware Department en Tecno InspecTop Contributor

If you ask me, this depend on your experience. :-)

My program is not free, but it is available to anyone interested.

your question has 2 Parts!

Ivan H. likes this

also add lead time & routing time

Thank you. I am very happy you found it useful :)

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