Reddit mentions of The Circuit Designer's Companion

The Circuit Designer's Companion was a great resource when I was getting started. I've got the second edition and still use it from time to time. I think they're on the third edition now. ISBN 0-7506-6370-7

As far as I am aware, Ted Williams' The Circuit Designer's Companion is considered to be the bible on layout and PCB design.

If you're looking for a broad practical book, this might be of use.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0750663707/

edit: Corrected

Johnson's High Speed Digital Design has a few chapters on power planes and multi-layer stackups, as well as being a good overall reference. The Circuit Designer's Companion is another popular book that covers PCB design techniques as well as several other electronics basics.


The best way to learn is to have your designs reviewed by experienced engineers; but if you're asking here I'm guessing you are doing this as a hobbyist. Maybe post your designs on some EE forums for review?


Also knowing 'how' is not as useful as 'why', ECAD tools generally are different enough that the specifics of how to accomplish something are not the same. Which tool do you use? Most have online user groups or forums for specific questions.

The Synopsys book club has a list of EE/CS books that are either the clear standouts in their topic area or at the very least a good presentation of the material.

Two less theoretical books you might also be interested in, depending on what you are looking for:

The Circuit Designer's Companion by Tim Williams is a good overview of the practical aspects of turning a schematic into a working circuit. Grounding, how to choose the right type of cap/resistor/inductor, EMC, etc.

Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz is similar to the Art of Electronics but is written at a more introductory level. It includes a lot of the important small details that either aren't covered in EE coursework or tend to get muddled in the slog through theory and are therefore easy to forget.

Best way to get back into EE stuff is to build some projects! Hackaday and EEVBlog are your friends, as are Sparkfun, Futurlec, and Digikey.

Someone posted a great BLDC paper a week ago I'm still using. http://www.amazon.com/Circuit-Designers-Companion-Edition-Engineers/dp/0750663707 is indispensable. Xilinx, Atmel, and LT parts manuals and app-notes. I use Switching power supply design by Pressman, but your pdf looks better. Also http://www.hottconsultants.com/techtips/decoupling.html , http://www.analog.com/static/imported-files/seminars_webcasts/High%20Speed%20System%20Applications%20%28PDF%29/HS%20Systems%20Part%204%20for%20Print_A.pdf, though I haven't used that in years (moved away from hs stuff lately).

Schaums when I fall over, and The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design when things get heavyish. When it comes to wireless stuff it's mostly stuff like wikipedia so I can remember how to do the encoding systems, too many for me to remember more than QAM and PSK offhand easily, the rest just exist in my brain as "other".