System check! Elektor wants to know how you feel about PCB design. What type of PCB do you design most often? Which factors influence your design decisions?
System check! Elektor wants to know how you feel about PCB design. What type of PCB do you design most often? Which factors influence your design decisions?
In the last System Check, we asked community members about their Internet dependency: If you lost access to the Internet tomorrow, could you still design and build electronics confidently? Here are the results.
System Check 27 results
The results suggest that while most of our community still feels capable of designing electronics without the Internet, very few are truly independent of it. About one in four respondents said they could work confidently offline, while the largest group said they could "mostly" manage. At the same time, nearly half admitted they could only handle simple projects or would struggle without online resources.
Perhaps the most striking finding is how deeply online searching has become part of the engineering workflow. Nearly two-thirds of respondents couldn't remember the last time they completed a project without searching the Internet. Only a small minority had done so within the past week or month, highlighting how naturally engineers now rely on online information during development.
When asked what they would miss most, the answer was overwhelming: datasheets. More than 60% chose them, far ahead of search engines, AI assistants, forums, tutorials, or vendor documentation. While AI and online communities are becoming valuable engineering tools, it seems as though fast access to accurate technical documentation remains the single most important online resource for electronics designers.
Elektor Magazine has been one of the leading sources of information on electronics for engineers, designers, start-ups and companies for 65 years. Our magazine is powered by an active community of electronics engineers – from students to professionals – who are passionate about designing and sharing innovative ideas.
For them, we publish hundreds of items a year, in formats such as articles, videos, webinars, and other learning formats. Our mission is to share knowledge in every possible way and inspire readers with the latest developments within the electrical engineering sector.
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