Customer Reviews

Circuit Designer's Companion (EDN Series for Design Engineers)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For someone who only knows V=IR, he could understand 20% of the content without difficulty.

For someone who ever took more than 2 related courses in college but hardly remember them, or ever had several monthes of hand on hardware experience. This book is written for him. BUY IT! EVERY PENNY IS WORTHY.

For a very experienced hardware engineer, 80% of this book is useless for him, the rest 20% and some tables/charts could be a good reference.

The author must be a good teacher as well as a cool hardware engineer base the following facts I observed in this book:

1. A lots of comprehensive drawing, most of them are dummy-proof.

2. Very good content structure, one can start from any chapter without difficulty. It is easy to finds what he want.

3. Easy English (OK, okay, I am from Taiwan). No riddle-like description. Always has some explaination when refer to an unpopular theory. You don't need an encycopedia when you read this book.

4. Good coverage: Components, Power and grounding, EMI, PCB problem, general problems of product design, transmission lines.

Clearly, this book is written for a digital hardware designer. Some analog issues are covered, yet they are degital design-related. For RF and pure analog design, this book is not enough.

For digital designer, I recommend this book without reservation.

Everywhere I have worked I've made sure we have lots of copies of this on hand... Many of them walk away because it's such a good reference. If you ever need to design or build a product or just a fun project and have it work, start from here. Everything you won't learn in school, and industry just calls "experience". Combine this with High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic and you have an extremely powerful combination of references, covering all the details you need to know. Very highly recommended.

I am about 2/3 the way through the book and am disappointed - not with the book, but with my schooling!

My profs were great and dedicated, but they didn't teach half the stuff in this book, not nearly enough real-world engineering. We came out of school without really knowing how to make a professional, working circuit design.

This great book will help the transition from school boy to engineer.

I highly recommend this book. Tim Williams explains real-world, critical circuit concerns in an easy to understand manner and backs it up with equations. For instance, did your profs ever explain what "ground bounce" really was, and if so did they emphasize how important it is to prevent and how?

The Circuit Designer's Companion is full of great advice and I hope to find more books by this author.

I got this book a couple of weeks ago and I absolutely love it. It is very to the point, and has information that I have not seen anywhere else. This book would be great for anyone who is looking to bring their schematics to the real world and have them work. It is definitly not a "here's a schematic and here is what it does book". It assumes you have a decent, but not overwhelming understanding of electronics (I am a high school student if that tells you anything).

It is like a bunch of concepts that would come with years of electrical engineering experience crammed beautifully into 368 pages for you to read.

If you are like most of us and don't have a really seasoned high frequency PCB layout guy, this book will likely pay for itself with your first new PCB design. Tim has done a great job jotting down a lifetime of experience and knowledge in designing PWB's, but the information could use some organization. Still, it provides a ready reference to get you away from some fairly common pitfalls in RF design and gives you enough info. to understand why - which is the real value of this book to me and my colleagues.

For those wanting more design level info on RF electronics see Chris Bowick's "RF Circuit Design". If you need more basic, but more diverse info see Jon Hagen's "Radio Frequency Electronics", and if you are in need of some testing guidance you won't be dissapointed in Joseph Carr's book "Practical Radio Frequency Test & Measurement", or if you are more into the magnetics/ TEM side of things Jerry Sevick's book "Transmission Line Transformers will be a sound investment. Lastly, if you need some PCB layout advice, your money will be well spent on Tim William's book "The Circuit Designers Companion".

Excellent book. Well-written and full of practical examples and advice -- not just what to do, but what not to do, as well.

Everything from avoiding ground-loops and calculating transmission-line effects on a PCB, to transistor characteristics and how to build a proper biasing two-transistor buffer. I found the transmission-line rules of thumb especially insightful.

The clever use of a length of wire to turn a rising edge into a short pulse is representative of the little tidbits that convey not just theoretical, but practical understanding.

Easy to read with plenty of diagrams, but no fluff here -- everything is concise and to the point. Introductory descriptions of components and their uses are followed by a discussion of their limitations and considerations for use in a circuit.

There's even a 17 page discussion of the limitations and design considerations for those considering using a microcontroller in your design. Excellent overview for circuit designers and those not yet intimately familiar with the capabilities of the latest microcontrollers. Although he calls assembler language "the microcontroller's own code" (which, in actuality, contains a superset of the microcontroller instructions that get mapped by the assembler), this section is otherwise accurate and shows a deep understanding of the issues involved, including a thorough discussion of the importance of a watchdog timer and how to add one, if not included in the microcontroller.

The end of the Analog IC section (Op-Amps, Comparators, and Voltage References) contains warnings about modeling op-amps. For example: "Models cannot capture a device's every sensitivity to supply variations..." and "slew rate and overshoot are especially difficult to model." He gives good advice on how to do initial rough modeling, but to always breadboard/prototype and take advantage of the embedded knowledge already contained in an evaluation board from the manufacturer.

What a great set of proven best practices, design guidelines and engineering knowledge! It's like having a product designer at your side to identify the tough problems and show you how to get through them. I recommend it to electronic designers that have even a smidge of doubt in their grounding, protection, PCB design, circuit performance, power supply or any other electronic product concept. You can skim through the book and do a thorough review of your design. Plus, you will learn the "why" and "how" of circuit design, whether you are doing analog, digital or power electronics design.

As other reviewers have already pointed out this book is a great source of practical design information that is not covered in engineering theory courses. One can read and re-read chapters highlighting great rules of thumb that apply to every-day design challenges. The book is really a must-have reference for any circuit/PCB/product designer.

That said, I have to suggestions to improve the book:

1. Analog domain is covered very well in this book, but the chapter on digital circuits is lacking in several important areas in my opinion.

a. I2C and SPI interfaces should be included alongside RS232, CAN and USB interface descriptions. Trade-offs of using I2C and SPI should be highlighted.

b. Digital interface timing parameters like setup, hold, edge rate, etc. should at least be mentioned. Here's why:

c. A discussion of digital bus topologies as it relates to timing parameters and PCB layout should be discussed. How to connect a multi-device bus, and make sure it satisfies interface timing specifications? Discuss star and daisy-chain topologies for layout. Fan-out and loading are already covered, but add examples of how those derate timing parameters on a shared bus.

2. The book is called a "companion". Unfortunately, in my experience the book's construction does not stand up to even moderate use. Sections of pages in my book have separated from the binding.

For someone thinking about buying the book these criticisms should not be taken alone. I chose not to cover all the wonderful parts of this book because other reviews here do a great job of it. I would not hesitate to recommend this insightful and well-written reference to anyone looking to improve their practical electronics design knowledge or to refresh skills lost to memory.

Really good content,. You will not be disappointed. Im an RF design engineer who needs to work with lots of digital interface control circuitry. Its not an analog book that will give you ccts for designing, but rather give you great insights into things like grounding, board layout etc. These are not tricks but experience gather from years of real world design. get it to complement an analog design book.

I've only had this book for a couple of weeks and have already found it a great reference. This book should be given to entering freshman in eletrical engineering; much of the practicality of the material is not even covered in school. The range of topics is useful to anyone in the field.