When designing printed circuit boards (PCBs) for your own custom electronics devices, it is important to ensure that the spaces on the board can accommodate the various components for which they are meant. Some items, like integrated circuits (ICs), have a fairly immovable, set length between connectors. A PCB must be able to fit all of the IC's prongs (or, at the very least, the prongs of an IC socket).

BHoles and Pads in PCBs

Another set of factors to consider when designing PCBs is the size of the holes to be drilled. You want to ensure that your holes are wide enough to accommodate the prongs from various resistors, capacitors and other components. If they are too wide, you will need to fill the gap with an excess of solder, and you run the risk of poor, fragile connections.

The solder pads (both those around the holes and those that stand alone) must be an appropriate size for the board, as well. You will likely want to create a sizable pad around a drilled hole, in order to allow components to be soldered easily into place. If these pads are too large, you run the risk of having them bump into one another, creating a short circuit on your PCB.

By using a computer-aided design (CAD) program, you can get a good sense of proper hole and solder pad size. Some advanced CAD applications even allow you to test out the functionality of a circuit board from within the program's interface. Some manufacturers of PCBs have the ability to import these CAD files directly into their PCB fabrication systems, making the process flow easily.