Paper or PDF? How do you do your datasheets?

[KL27x]

Additional comments are welcome. But don't expect anyone to actually read them.

[Nusa]

I suspect the answers to this will have a strong correlation to the age of the responder.

Those of us that have always had the internet are comfortable with electronic media and are adept at searching documents to find info.

Those of us who were active before the internet are comfortable with paper media and are adept at using tables of contents and/or indexs to find info.

Many of us can handle both the new-fangled and old-fangled methods, but have a strong preferance.

Some of us will take it however we can get it, so long as we get the info we need. We'll print the bits we really need to reference constantly.

Industry as a whole is steadily been moving away from hard-copy as a cost-saving measure. They still need technical writers to create reference material, but they no longer need huge publishing arms.

[ebastler]

Additional comments are welcome. But don't expect anyone to actually read them.

But you will deign to look at the poll results? Thank you, massah!

[KL27x]

I didn't mean that I wouldn't read them. I making reference to the original thread. Where it seems to me that most of the posters were there to add the same 2 cents over and over, as if they didn't bother reading the thread and just wanted to vote. That's why I made this. Go, Ford! Booh, Chevy!

[Howardlong]

Some comments...

I download most datasheets so I have a local copy, and more recently I fairly religiously download them into PDF Expert* on an iPad. This is such a convenient way to store datasheets.

Relying on always having a downloadable version is risky, occasionally they just disappear from the internet, or sometimes you don't quite use the right Googling. Sometimes you might not have internet access, pretty much most days I find myself reading a datasheet on a tube ride.

All too often, Google results point to useless online viewable versions of the PDF, or worse, take you to a series of rabbit holes with no datasheet at all. Having a local copy saves you going round in circles.

I still look online anyway on occasion even if I have a local copy, frequently there are newer versions of datasheets or new errata to download.

I almost always print out the pinout page(s) for each project/design and annotate them with my own notes using a good old fashioned pen.

Until about three years ago, I had a reasonably large collection of databooks and technical references, filling 7m of full height bookshelves. Since I'd moved to using a tablet for a reading medium a couple of years earlier, I found I hardly ever referred to physical books anymore, and most of the physical texts I had were woefully out of date and no longer useful anyway (software related texts are especially prone to this). I threw out 85% of my books as a result, keeping only those that had real use or had sentimental value.

Here's one caveat to relying on PDFs or other electronic formats for documentation: sometimes, the electronic format has been rendered really badly, so diagrams are unreadable or unclear. Kindle, for example, is really bad for that in reference texts, but worse I find the reading layout itself and its page reformat on the fly to be very unnatural. At least PDF maintains the original format.

* Apple's iBooks is crap because once you get a PDF into it you can't get it out again, and when you "backup" your device, when you need to restore or move devices, half of the PDFs disappear, and those that remain have their titles reverted back to the original file name. Somehow, Apple get away with such crap.

[AndyC_772]

Data sheets for all ICs used in a given project are downloaded and stored within the project folder.

Individual pages that I need to write on - for example, to tick off pins as I check them against the schematic, or to annotate with timing parameters that I've had to calculate, get printed out. Everything else can stay on screen.

[mikeselectricstuff]

The only time I ever print anything out is the pin diagram, to scribble notes on & juggle pin allocations around Having 3 big monitors helps a lot.

[RoGeorge]

I still have some paper Data Books from decades ago, but didn't used them since ages.

For our times parts, Datasheets are a completely new kind of beast. It would be ridiculous, and also totally impractical, to print them on paper. How would one handle an 800 pages datasheet for a microcontroller, or a 2000 pages datasheet from an FPGA, or a 5000 pages for a software manual? Such a datasheet would be thicker then a brick. It's literally impossible to handle them.

Also, the times when one knew by heart the pinout or logical diagram of an IC are long gone. Search function inside the PDF datasheet is vital when designing with new parts. One could never expect an engineer to know all the details for a thousand pages datasheet. Even just reading such a document would be ridiculous. Nobody is doing that, there is no time and no sense for it.

A good engineer must know how to search inside datasheets, and what to look for. It is not supposed to memorize datasheets like 30-50 years ago. I'm thinking mostly about digital parts here.

Of course, printing a couple of pages with pinout or bits and registers you intend to work that day, that's totally OK and saves time.

Forgot to add one more thing:
Nowadays parts became so complex, that companies like Xilinx have dedicated software just to downloads Xilinx PDFs for you, organize them locally on your disk, and help you search inside them. To work with only one part, one may need tens or hundreds of PDFs totalizing many thousands of pages. No exaggeration here, this is how much documentation is needed.

[CJay]

Depends on the device, I print out sections of some so I can make notes, prime examples are PIC datasheets, I have enough knowledge of the chips to get by but if there's a new peripheral or my code doesn;t work as expected, I'll print and doodle as I read, just helps me get my thoughts in order.

Others I print whole sheets if they're small or entirely new to me (Si5351 chip and config app note is sat in front of me right now) so I can quickly flip back and forth between sections and, again, make notes.

Others, I have entirely on screen.

So, it's not entirely clear cut.

[Aeternam]

I gave up on printouts. They cause an enormous clutter on the desk, and EVERY TIME you need one it's gone. So you print it out again and add it to the pile, which is usually when you find the original copy.

I store my PDFs in Evernote where they get tagged by type ("npn transistors", "heatsinks",...) This plus Evernote's cross-notebook and in-PDF full-text search is a tremendous help if I can't remember what component I used in project xyz. Plus, it syncs to my iPad so I don't have to have the PC turned on while at the bench.

[Howardlong]

The only time I ever print anything out is the pin diagram, to scribble notes on & juggle pin allocations around Having 3 big monitors helps a lot.

Bizarre! That's exactly how I annotate them, with a highlighting pen for pin function.

I prefer the pin diagrams with the options by the pins rather than on a separate table, as when you're probing you don't have another indirection.

[Howardlong]

Others I print whole sheets if they're small or entirely new to me (Si5351 chip and config app note is sat in front of me right now) so I can quickly flip back and forth between sections and, again, make notes.

That Si5351 is a particularly nasty chip to program. Perhaps there are better tools now, but when I started using them five years ago there wasn't a lot of documentation. There was a clock config application, but that generated things in registers that weren't documented. As I'm sure you already know, there are hundreds of registers.

In addition in the early 'A' versions, I had about a 7-8% rejection in production where the PLLs wouldn't lock properly. SiLabs were little help, other than to confirm my config was correct. It seems to be largely fixed on the more recent 'B' versions. Make sure you avoid the older 'A' versions!

[CJay]

Others I print whole sheets if they're small or entirely new to me (Si5351 chip and config app note is sat in front of me right now) so I can quickly flip back and forth between sections and, again, make notes.

That Si5351 is a particularly nasty chip to program. Perhaps there are better tools now, but when I started using them five years ago there wasn't a lot of documentation. There was a clock config application, but that generated things in registers that weren't documented. As I'm sure you already know, there are hundreds of registers.

In addition in the early 'A' versions, I had about a 7-8% rejection in production where the PLLs wouldn't lock properly. SiLabs were little help, other than to confirm my config was correct. It seems to be largely fixed on the more recent 'B' versions. Make sure you avoid the older 'A' versions!

No, it's still horrendous and the example code/libraries out there just add to my confusion as they're (to my eyes) so badly written or obfuscated and poorly documented it just confuses the issue.

I've given up trying to work out how others have done it and am coding from scratch, first milestone will be to get the damn thing to output any signal, no matter what and then work onward from there.

I think I'm about halfway through a refill pad with notes and musings.

[Rerouter]

Generally only when its something that doesnt easily fit on a screen, or that i need to draw on,

The main time i print is plotting my gerbers to a pdf then printing to verify with a magnifying glass, its my final error catch before production as i get a 1:1 scaling in my hands, and can see if something is too close if text is below what can be printed, etc, as i may miss things on screen as i have been staring at it that way for the past few hours.

[Cliff Matthews]

My desktop Parts shortcut opens a folder with just a screen of sub directories, all datasheets (and app notes if useful) are nested down no more than 3 to 5 directory levels. eg: active\IC analog\opamps\instrument

All windows open in details view and long file names have part number first, voltage, package, beta, etc.., often followed by "(have 4)" to double as a basic inventory system. Currently my setup holds 55 gigabytes, so backups are important.

[JPortici]

The only time I ever print anything out is the pin diagram, to scribble notes on & juggle pin allocations around Having 3 big monitors helps a lot.

I do exactly the same.

From time to time i wonder if i should make an app to do allocations on dspic/pic32... just like every other manufacturer lets you with simple tools. I used to use stmcube and whatever its name from nxp just to plan the pinout.

With pic32 it is somewhat frustrating... every time i get to the last couple pins and find outi have to start again

[Howardlong]

The only time I ever print anything out is the pin diagram, to scribble notes on & juggle pin allocations around Having 3 big monitors helps a lot.

I do exactly the same.

From time to time i wonder if i should make an app to do allocations on dspic/pic32... just like every other manufacturer lets you with simple tools. I used to use stmcube and whatever its name from nxp just to plan the pinout.

With pic32 it is somewhat frustrating... every time i get to the last couple pins and find outi have to start again

Someone did a few spreadsheets to help with the MZ series over on the microchip forum. I think we're all meant to use Harmony MHC or the MCC, but they're both just so bug ridden and therefore untrustworthy.

[David Hess]

I cannot mark up a PDF in a consistent manner and even if I could, no portable display device has close to the performance or resolution of paper.

[b_force]

I never use printed paper anymore.
Can't remember when I actually printed something to be very honest.

Sometimes I download PDF's, it depends on the project and the client I am working for.
Or how bad my internet connection is, although at home it's fast an unlimited anyway.