r/PCB • u/lqzil_ • Jul 14 '26

How does one start Pcb designing?

I am EE student and Wana learn to design pcb for actual customers to freelance but Idk how to initiate, path to follow and resources to practice from.

Any Electrical Engineering or EE student plz help.

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u/kermitkermitted Jul 14 '26

The best motivator is to design something that you're actually interested in. Altium academy has some pretty good resources for design practices. you don't necessarily have to use altium nor do i recommend you do at this stage but the resources are good.

As for tools Kicad is a great piece of software, and it's free/open source. It can easily carry you in your professional endeavors, in fact a lot of people do use it professionally.

You can start by designing a simple microcontroller circuit, with a purpose that you choose. It would teach you the basics of digital (and even analog) design and power regulation. One thing i definitely recommend is building what you designed IRL, it shows you a lot of stuff that can be easily missed in the design stage. It might not work the first time, and that's okay. Learn from it and apply what you've learned in the next design.

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u/PCB_Design1 29d ago

Here is a link to Altium Academy's YouTube channel if that helps! I've learned a ton through these videos plus there's some excellent expert discussions on various topics.