Interview with Doug Brooks

Featured Engineer

Doug Brooks

Interview with Doug Brooks - President, UltraCAD Design, Inc

What does UltraCAD do?

We are a printed circuit board design service bureau, specializing in large, dense, high-speed designs.

What was the career path that got you to UltraCAD?

I had a career in both Engineering and Marketing, culminating in general management and owner of my own company. I sold my interest in that company and started UltraCAD in January, 1992.

What are your responsibilities at UltraCAD?

I am mostly retired. I have a partner who does the work and I take care of the finances. I also enjoy writing articles and giving occasional seminars. (The picture is from a seminar I gave in Shanghai a couple of years ago.)

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

Does my Audi A4 Cabriolet Quattro count? We actually don’t use much in the way of hardware tools besides ordinary computers.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

Our primary software tool is Mentor’s Expedition Design Suite, although I also really like the Hyperlynx simulation tool (also Mentor’s) and Polar’s Quicksolver impedance calculators.

What is the hardest/trickiest bug you have ever fixed?

A few years ago a customer told us two nets were shorted on a VERY large, VERY dense board and said he thought it was a design problem. We looked and couldn’t find it. Next day he called and said they were shorted and said he was SURE it was a design problem. We still couldn’t find it. Next day he called and said the two nets were shorted, told us it WAS a design problem, gave us the exact location, and told us where it was on the Gerbers. Then we found it! But there was no indication in the design that the nets were shorted, the design passed all system checks including the DRC checks, and there was no apparent cause for it. We sent the database to the vendor (who gives EXCELLENT customer support.) The problem, of course, had multiple causes (as subtle problems often do.) We had inadvertently given one of the nets an illegal name. The software dutifully accepted it and then ignored all subsequent errors! The customer was able to repair the boards and the vendor issued an immediate interim release to prevent this from happening again.

What is on your bookshelf?

I like to read spy thrillers and legal mysteries from authors like Patrick Robinson, James Patterson, Baldacci, Grisham, Ludlum, Grippando, Higgins, and (perhaps surprisingly) Lisa Scottoline.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve? (special way to analyze circuits, special process you use to make something, etc.)

Not really. Keep your eye on the target, understand what it is you are doing, be thorough, think out of the box, and check your work!

What has been your favorite project?

My first engineering project out of school was the Surveyor Space vehicle that went to the moon in the 60’s. It paved the way for the Appollo project by mapping potential landing sites. I worked on four of the systems, including the television cameras. I saw some of the earliest pictures that ever came back from the moon.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences? (blowing up things, getting shocked, etc.)

I once designed a mechanical load cell using statistical regression analysis instead of Field-Solving techniques. My VP of engineering said it could never be done that way. Turned out to be a highly successful product. He never could accept the fact that I didn’t use HIS engineering expertise.

What are you currently working on?

Personally, some articles for the PCB007Design Web site and a scheduled presentation in Australia later this year.

What direction do you see your business heading in the next few years?

UP.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

The driving force in the PCB design industry since the beginning has been the decreasing rise times of the signals. These will continue to shorten. Dealing with the signal integrity issues caused by these short rise times is getting tougher and tougher. Since the rise times will continue to get faster, we will somehow find ways to deal with those signal integrity issues, but there are no magic answers. (Note: Small component sizes are a challenge for board fabricators and assemblers, but not designers. That’s just a scale issue for us.)