Documenting

I start with a blank text document and fill in the name of the project, what its purpose is, and any individual components of the circuit that are worth noting. Following that I will list the date that the project began and any revisions that took place. I will also note why the revision was necessary and what may need to be done to correct the issue. I will then describe the function of the circuit briefly, making sure that I list anything important about it, like particular component functions. This brief bit of information is important as it is the building block of a well documented project. They all need to start somewhere.

Following the brief summary of the circuit detail is an in depth discussion into the actual operation of the circuit. I have found this to be absolutely necessary in my documentation process as it not only clearly points out how particular portions of the circuit are supposed to work, but it also provides me with an opportunity to look back at these notes when a section of a circuit could be useful in another project. For example, the slow charge circuit in my top-up project was also used to control a gate for high power LEDs on my turn signal to fade them on. Without this kind of documentation, I would have gone back to researching how I solved this issue in the first place, rather than just grabbing what I needed from previous documents and getting to work. I'm developing a new way of documenting my circuits operation. You can read about it under the "Developing a New Workflow" section of my Schematics article.

Something else I've been developing is a guide for soldering components when assembling new boards. My projects have grown in size and component count is high. Keeping track of where these components are supposed to go was becoming difficult. I've started writing down all the components that are used on the PCB and correlating them with their on board indicators. For example, the silkscreen marker "C2" would be a 0.1uF capacitor according to the component reference sheet below. I print this sheet out and keep it next to me while soldering. It has saved much time and frustration in the board assembly process.

In the future I will improve this process by documenting the names of the components used as well as their datasheets in a similar fashion to the above component reference sheet. At the moment I do store all the invoices from my major projects, but I have no way of quickly finding the exact parts that were used. This is something that would definitely improve my workflow and project documentation.