Components nomenclature on PCB silkscreen

[engr_joni_ee]

Hi,

I am working on 8 channel PCB design having around 20+ capacitors on each channel. I am looking for nice nomenclature. In the beginning I have chosen CAxx, CBxx, CCxx, CDxx,...., to represent capacitors in channels A, B, C, D, ..... but then comes capacitors on FPGA, Flash, and Ethernet on which I need suggestion how to assign them.

The capacitors on Power and SDRAM can be written as CPxx, CSxx. etc.

 

[barry]

I have never done this. Why do you think it’s important or useful to declare reference designators this way?

When you look at the schematic, you’ll know explicitly which channel a component belongs to; when you look at a component on the PCB, knowing which channel (or FPGA or power supply) it belongs to is meaningless unless you know it’s place in the circuit.

 

[andre_luis]

Whenever there are repetitions of circuits in the project, it is preferable to encapsulate them in a block, repeating it as many times as necessary, prefer automation of the component designator assignment process. This feature is available at least in the CAD tool I use (you did not mention yours). In the case of Altium Designer, using the REPEAT feature, a suffix would automatically be added to all repeated devices, not just the capacitors; for example, all other capacitors on the board would be named as C1, C2, Cn, ... while the capacitors on the channels would be something like C4_1, C4_2, C4_n, ... (perhaps there is the alphanumeric entry option, I guess).