Schematic capture and PCB layout
From blank sheet to fabrication package — including the high-speed work most shops sub-contract.
This is the core discipline everything else sits on. Not a commodity service — the difference between a board that works on the first spin and a board that eats three months shows up here, in decisions made before a single track is routed.
High-speed, done properly
Modern embedded boards are high-speed boards whether or not anyone says so out loud. DDR4 at the memory interface, MIPI CSI-2 from every camera, PCIe to the modem or the NVMe, Gigabit Ethernet to the switch. Each has a tolerance budget, and the budget is spent by the stack-up before routing even begins.
| Interface | What governs it |
|---|---|
| DDR3 / DDR4 / LPDDR4 | Fly-by topology, write levelling, tight intra-byte-lane matching, reference-plane continuity |
| MIPI CSI-2 / DSI | Differential impedance, matched lane lengths, no plane splits under the pairs |
| PCIe Gen2 / Gen3 | AC coupling placement, via stub control, loss budget across connector and cable |
| Gigabit Ethernet / RGMII | Magnetics placement, chassis isolation, clock skew management |
| USB 3.x | Return-path integrity, ESD placement that does not wreck the eye |
Stack-up first
The stack-up decides what the board can do. It gets defined with the fabricator — real prepreg, real copper weights, real achievable impedance — before layout starts. Design rules then encode that fabricator’s actual capability, so DFM is something the board already passes rather than something it discovers.
Rigid-flex and HDI, when they earn their cost
Rigid-flex removes connectors, harnesses and assembly steps from a tight enclosure. We have designed a three-board single rigid-flex assembly built at Eurocircuits, including bend-radius calculation and stack-up transitions. It costs more per board and frequently costs less per product.
HDI, blind and buried vias appear when the pin density leaves no other option — a fine-pitch BGA with a thousand balls does not fan out on through-holes. Both are tools with a price; neither should be reached for by default.
What you receive
A complete manufacturing dataset, native source files, and documentation that lets somebody else pick the design up. Full IP transfer, every time. You should never be locked to your design house by a file format.
Common questions
Straight answers
Altium or KiCad?
We work in both. Altium for dense high-speed boards and where you need a full manufacturing dataset; KiCad where you want a toolchain your team can own without a license. The deliverable is the same either way, and we will hand over native source files, not just outputs — the design is yours.
What layer counts and geometries do you work to?
Routinely 4 to 12 layers, HDI with blind and buried vias when the pin density demands it, and rigid-flex where the mechanics require it. We design to what your chosen fabricator can actually hold — geometry targets get confirmed against their capability sheet before layout, not after a DFM rejection.
Will you work from our schematics?
Yes, layout-only engagements are fine. We will review the schematic first and tell you what we would change — that review is part of the job, not an upsell. If the schematic has a problem, finding it before layout is the cheapest it will ever be.
Do you use version control for hardware?
Yes, git-based. Every revision is diffable and attributable, which matters when a design lives for a decade and the person who made a decision has moved on.
Evidence
Where this has been applied
Hero: Altium 3D render of the rigid-flex assembly in its folded, installed geometry. A flat board render sells none of the difficulty.
Flight-controller carrier for a tube-launched UAV
Teardown, clean-room re-implementation, and a rigid-flex carrier that fits inside a launch tube.
Hero: system architecture diagram as a clean vector drawing, not a photo. Sensors on the left, compute in the middle, bandwidth figures on the arrows. This case study's value is the thinking, so show the thinking.
Edge-compute architecture for an unmanned surface vessel
Three architectures compared on real bandwidth budgets, so the platform decision was made on evidence rather than TOPS figures.