Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorI must add in on this discussion as this is one of the topics that I am very strongly positioned on.
There are basically two camps of thought here. 1. The purpose of the drawing (schematic) is simply to obtain the interconnectivety of the signals by someone who knows what they are intending to connect and provide an efficeient way to pass that connectivity to a place and route tool. 2. The purpose of a drawing (schematic) is to provide a clear understanding of the interconnection of the varous sub elements within the design so that future people who refer to the drwawing can easily tell what is going on. As I believe that all engineers really create is paperwork (electronic or otherwise) to document (capture) their design thoughts (so that others can actually execute upon it, be it another person or a computer), then I fall into# 2 above. If you have ever had to dig in and figure out what is going on in one of those 'schematics' where all you have is big squares and stubby lines with signal names on them, you know what I am talking about. Proper planning and thought (engineering) before you start 'dropping squares drawing lines' will provide half a chance that the structure and flow will be clarfiied by the drawing you are creating (and the lab technician will thank you 100 times over). I say you draw the lines between the elements in you design with left to right signal flow (and place <-- reverse arrows to indicate any place where reverse signal flow occurs on the page). In the end, you will have a well documented, easy to follow representation of your intended design (oh, and something that the P&R tool will turn into a working design). Just my thoughts.
