This is not a subject I give much thought to.
For one, we here at Screaming Circuits don’t really care too much what convention you use for your components. We want them to match and be properly formatted when in your BoM, of course. But because we program our SMT machines electronically, we don’t really care if you mix things up; i.e., O instead of R for resistor, or F for capacitor. It’s not a good idea to do that, but we can still build it.
But, if we can build it, shouldn’t anybody be able to build it? And, if anyone can build it, why should it matter? Well, in theory, it shouldn’t matter at all. In practice though, people tend to be human and humans tend to be error-prone. That’s why we have standards, conventions and test procedures — to reduce the chances for errors. We also have conventions for the purpose of distributing bad, overpriced food and educational sessions, but that’s probably a different convention.
It would be kind of like if you drove into a small town and there was a sign at the city limits indicating that in this town, red means go and green means stop. You would have all of the information needed safely traverse the town, but you would still be very prone to go with the green light.
I just recently saw a design where the connectors were labeled U1, U2… Again, we can build this and we did. But, if it comes time to do any rework, or if you want to make some design mods in-house, of if someone else needs to work with the board, they’ll see “U something” and think you’re talking about an IC instead of some sort of connector.
There are some specific industry standard documents covering the reference designator conventions, but I bet it’s one of those things that most people just sort of know, but don’t have the official document to go with it. Wikipedia has a list and a lot of companies probably have their own conventions.
It is easy enough to find these lists of conventions, but it does leave me wondering how some of them came to be. I get “R” for resistor and “C” for capacitor. “Q” for transistor even makes sense, although it’s derived from a property of the device instead of the name as are R and C. But, why “U” for integrated circuit? It used to be “IC”, but that’s fallen out of favor now. Really weird is the inductor. It starts with “I”, it’s inductance value is measured in “henries” and henries are indicated by “L.” Go figure.
Duane Benson
U take the high road and L take the low road
Perhaps the “U” for IC might be a play on the Greek symbol for micro (?), as in “microprocessor?”
I think Mike may be correct about the U.
Connectors are always confusing, especially when people use the same references as used for other components or the same for plug and socket.
In general many try to keep it to a single letter – that at least gives us 26 different types of component to place on the board.
The smaller the reference – the smaller the area it takes up. Only getting longer when space is available such as with relays (RLn), transformers (TX) etc.
A few additional thoughts on reference designators.
Some letter prefixes are not suitable for reference designators, as they can create confusion. For example, the letters I, O, can be confused with the numbers one or zero.
Connectors are a world unto themselves. While it can be helpful to identify connectors by type – i.e., Pxx for Plug or Jxx for Jack – not all connectors fit into this category.
When assigning reference designators, sometimes it is important to consider the system or product interconnects as a whole. For example, a multi-board system should not include a ‘J1′ on multiple PCB’s, because this can lead to confusion during system assembly or debugging.
Another issue to consider is assembly/test/end user documentation. Are there documents which refer to connectors or other key components by refdes? If so, it’s a good idea to keep those component references unchanged.
Regardless of the reference scheme used, it is always best to settle the reference designators early, and use back-annotation (if at all) in a well-defined manner. Changing refdes’ in mid-stream can create all sorts of problems.