Style Guidelines

• Use a mil grid size when placing components and wires (ideally 100mil or 50mil). Press G to change grid size in the schematic (grid size can be seen in the bottom left corner). For positioning text a 10mil grid size is fine.
• Try to give nets meaningful labels - for example, WATCHDOG_CLK for the clock pin of a watchdog timer. This helps immensely during the layout phase and in debugging to know how to treat a certain signal - a net labelled NetLabel_R1_1 is pretty much meaningless.
• Try to place components in an arrangement that keeps wire lengths short and minimizes overlaps.
• Pull-up/pull-down resistors and decoupling capacitors should be positioned relatively close to the pin they’re associated with so that their purpose is clear.
• Power symbols should point upwards, and ground symbols should point downwards.
• A schematic should generally flow from left to right. This means input signals should enter from the left and outputs should exit to the right (in general).
• Avoid four-point nodes. This is when four wires intersect at one point. This can cause issues if one of the four wires gets disconnected from the rest somehow, and it can be very difficult to spot.
• Make use of notes and text boxes in the schematic to add information that someone else reading your schematic would like to know. This could include any circuit calculations, design decisions, etc.
• Fill the Comment field for all components with the part number for the component (such as BD87A28FVM-TR for this component). This is so that when generating the BOM for ordering parts, we have a designated field for indicating which part we want.

Creating New Components

• Before creating a new component in the library, first check if there’s a corresponding component already there and save yourself the effort.
  • In the Components panel, click All at the top and pick the type of component you want to check for.
  • Look through the list for a matching component, or use the filter on the lefthand side to filter for certain component parameters (value, package size, etc).
• In the Components panel, click All at the top and pick the type of component you want to check for.
• Look through the list for a matching component, or use the filter on the lefthand side to filter for certain component parameters (value, package size, etc).
• If not, see Sourcing Parts Guidelines on how to create a new component in Altium.