Automatic way into the derivative design and produce printed circuit board layout diagram, and to the extent of what, depending on many factors. Each method has its most appropriate use of the scope for choice.

1. Manual design and build wiring diagram
For simple single-sided and two-panel design by hand is the preferred approach, it can also successfully applied to higher complexity of the circuit of single products or small batch production. Manual design with high mobility and all possible human ingenuity. However, for highly complex digital circuit board, in particular contains more than 100 integrated circuit board, it is difficult to achieve by manual design. Manual methods in quality, time and the necessary training of personnel have also been limited. In the world, a large proportion of the printed circuit board design and layout plans of the generation is still done by hand. Completely manual method does not require any investment, so more to be adopted, although it's in part to achieve increasingly Shao, especially in the Shu Zi Dian Lu printed board design.

2. Auto Design
Automatic printed circuit board design and layout plan of the generation is very valuable, it requires standardization of input, with a few simple implementation of the specification. The design contains more than 150 high-precision complex digital integrated circuit board and a great many difficult substrates, it is the ideal tool. The overall design time can be reduced from weeks to days and can be an almost perfect result. For a large number of printed circuit board design, the need for a strict timetable, this is very important, and also asked to debug and correct at least, which makes CAD often as the preferred method. Automatic Mapping layout than the hand-drawn, or taping method has higher accuracy. Analog printed circuit board design is usually not automatic, because it is different from digital circuits, most of the simulation is difficult to simplify printed circuit board design conditions, is difficult to build an intuitive and simple implementation of the specification table.

Substantial investment in CAD equipment always requires a system can be fully utilized. If the circuit board with less than 20, the number of discrete parts more than 50%, or only very small amount of printed circuit boards, use the CAD is almost no effect.