Guidelines

Good schematics show you the circuit. Bad schematics make you decipher them. Here you can find a bunch of guidelines we set up to get consistent schematics along the project.

Schematics

Clean Text placement

• After placing a symbol make sure the designator is close to the symbol and does not overlap other text or tracks

• Make some space and move parts if they are too close

• Do not place text verticaly

Layout flow

• Logical flow from left to right

• Power connectioncs should go up to positive voltages and down to negative voltages

• Rotate common symbols the same way to find similarities faster in a schematics

Schematic Symbols

• Show pins of an IC in a position relevant to their function, not how they happen to stick out of the chip.

• Positive pins top the top

• Negative pins to the bottom

• Inputs to the left

• Outputs to the right

Direct connections, within reason

• reduce wire crossing and alike as much as possible for clarity

• draw dots on junctions if your tool does not do it for you (if not you should use a better one)

NETs and Labels

• Give your NETs nicely readable names

• But keep them reasonably short

• Always try to use your tool to select a NET instead of writing it by hand to avoind spelling mistakes

• Use upper case for NET Labels

• See this ANSI/IEEE standard for recommended pin name abbreviations.