On the 29th September 1999 I sat for the IPC PWB Designer's Certification exam which is based on the relevant Rigid circuit board design standards, especially IPC-D-275. I have been looking forward to this certification exam being available in Australia for many years so when the SMCBA mentioned they had organised for it to be run here, I jumped at the chance to sit for it.

We had a local guy, Leon Fonstin (Integrated CAD Technologies), giving us the two-day preparation workshop & since it was his first time presenting, John Sabo (Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley) was in attendance as well. This is great because, with Leon, there are now two accredited presenters in Australia making it easier for aussies to be able to sit this exam without having to wait the year-or-three for an american presenter to come out here.

Another PCB designer friend, Brian Rusten, emailed me to find out about it. I thought that my reply was pertinent to any designer considering the Certification, so, here is an excerpt of that reply...

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> What was it like? Did it seem worthwhile to you?

I really enjoyed doing it actually. When I heard 5 years ago that they
were organising this certification, I thought "I'm gonna do that one day"
so when the opportunity was there, I did. To me, it was worthwhile.

I'll do a write up & put it on my webpage soon, but in a nutshell I
received the study book in the snail-mail & did some pre-reading before
the course. We had a 2-day study workshop which was going through the
study notes (I also took along my copy of D-275, handy) and asked nasty
questions. We had terrific barney's over what the standard said & what we
all do in practise. This was great as it made us very aware of where each
of us overstep the mark when it comes to producibility levels of PCB's.

Also, since the questions were made up by US PCB Designers, there is a
certain amount of Yankee talk that was worth discussing, e.g. When they
say "10mf", they mean 10 micro Farad's (10uF), not 10 milli Farad's (10mF)
like SI units suggest!

The exam was max 2hours (I had done my first pass of all questions in 50
minutes), multiple choice, no negative marking. There were 104 questions
(104 are needed so that each area was statistically tested appropriately)
& 73% was needed for a pass. After the examination, there was a chance for
review, as a class, so that we could identify our own problem areas (mine
is probably "Documentation").

The exam was not `a sitter'. Of course there were questions anyone
pretending to be a Designer would get, but there were plenty that made me
think carefully as well. Although I've been designing for 11 years now I'm
glad I put the time in for the pre-work & the workshop, otherwise, who
knows! I definitely understand the standards much more than before &
that's a good thing.

If a company sponsors someone to go along (like happened for me) then they
will be notified of whether I passed or not. Only I am aware of what mark
I got (89% actually). There was an unofficial prize to the top mark getter
in the exam, a coffee mug with "Top Dog" emblazoned on the side! We
actually had three guys tied on top with 94%.

The future...

Well, there is supposedly an advanced certification & I'll be pushing for
that to happen here in Oz sooner than later. There is also a high-speed
designers certification being worked on as well although not ready yet.
The D-275 standard has been superseeded by the 2221 & 2222 standards so it
would be good if the current pool of questions were upgraded to look at
these sometime. This is all done by volunteers, so some patience will be
needed (or volunteering!).

Anyway Brian, I would suggest that it would be a good thing for every PCB
Designer to do. If nothing else, we gain greater knowledge about the
standard. If you get the chance, jump at it.

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Criticism?

I have heard of some criticism surrounding the 2-day workshop suggesting that it is about "basically teaching you how to pass the exam not so much [how to use] the standards". Well, I suppose we did have some (heated?) discussions about what we actually do contrasted with what the standard suggests when it comes to antipads in power layers etc. This happened quite a few times on varied topics. The mantra "Well, if you wanna pass the exam..." was repeated many a time. I think in bringing up these points in the class we all learnt from it, so no criticism from me here.

A 2-day overview of any complex standard is going to be brief & to the point. I'm sure the overview concentrated on what was likely to be tested, not so much on going through the standard(s) paragarapgh-by-paragraph & so was tailored to passing the exam more than knowing the standard(s) `inside out'. It feel it would have taken 5 days for that! Even so, I now know the standard better than before I began.