[sdiy] square pads

[David G. Dixon]

> I ship a 1:1 color photo of an assembled board with my kits. It's a
> just a few cents when printed in large quantities but it's very
> helpful for cross-checking parts orientation or resistor colors -
> especially for those who assemble their kits far from computers and
> can't simultaneously check the assembly instructions online. Wouldn't
> work for an extra-large vocoder boards, though :)

I actually provide a collection of various computer graphic images of the
board layout (complete with connectors, color-coded resistors, diode
stripes, transistor shapes, chip dimples, cap shapes and values, etc) to
guide the builder of my boards.  On this graphic, +V is always red, GND is
always green, and -V is always black.  I don't silkscreen my PCBs, so this
graphic is all I refer to when stuffing my own boards.  The BOM is also
graphical: I just copy all the little parts off of the layout graphic and
line them up next to the BOM table.  This is a major help for organizing the
parts, as you can actually lay the parts out and see visually whether you've
forgotten anything.  It's all a bit anal, but I virtually never make a PCB
stuffing mistake.  This, to me, is much easier than having to read the
little white writing on the PCB itself.