Technical Writing

Report Writing Guide Lines

These guidelines may be used to write your report for the final project of the course. You do not need to follow these steps if you write in an acceptable style.

Centered from the top to bottom & from left to right margin, write:

Course Number and Title
Title of the Project
Group Members
Semester and Year
Date of Submission
Date Due

Start your report with an abstract:

Abstract

Write a paragraph on:

	The purpose of the project
	How you approached the design
	How successfully you completed it based on your simulation and/or practical results.

An Example for an abstract for a four-bit digital counter project

Abstract

In this project, a four-bit up counter was designed to count from 0 to 15. Four 75Lxxx D flip flops were used in the design. The chips were connected to provide divide-by-2 circuits following a count diagram that led to a sequence count. The schematics were entered into PSpice using schematics editor. The circuit was simulated, the hardware components were set up on a breadboard, and the circuit was tested using display devices. The practical results were in good agreement with the simulation results. This report details the design, the clock diagram, the simulation, and the practical results.

Introduction

In this section, write two or three paragraphs on the following:

Possible applications of the idea involved in your project (where is it used in real life?)
If you know different approaches for your design, you may talk about them (just ideas), which one you followed, and why you chose that path.

(Note: knowing more design approaches in this class is not required, while if it happens that you know other approaches, you may include them in the introduction section)

For item 1 (as a brainstorm exercise), you may think of electronics applications that you see in stores such as multimedia applications of sound and video, automotive electronics, utility applications, etc. The design may be considered as a building block for a larger application. Knowing how to design and build simple functions may help you accomplish larger projects. For item 2 (not required), you may suggest ways to approach the design. You may consider ideas using analog to digital converters or digital oscillators, etc. For this introductory course, you may include reasons for selecting a particular approach that could be familiarity with the method, availability of components in PSpice libraries for simulation, availability of chips, and a better understanding for the operation of some of the components since they were covered in the lecture. You may want to obtain information from the library for this section of the report. If you have previous experience in electronics, you may talk about differences in performance and cost between different approaches.

Design

In this section of the report, you may include the following:

	More details on your design method and how you implemented it.
	Schematics diagrams used in the implementation. Explain the operation of the circuit and show how it satisfies the requirements.
	If there are design equations, write them down and calculate values for circuit elements.

Computer Simulation

	In this section of the report, write one paragraph that summarizes your simulation method. For example, the schematics was entered to PSpice using schematics editor, the simulation was run using this type of analysis (e.g. transient with a time step of … for so many milliseconds). This will allow simulating so many pulses, etc. If there are different units where sensors are used, you mention that considering a voltage that represents this physical quantity can simulate this kind of signals (sound, picture, pressure, temperature, etc).
	Include a hardcopy of the drawing.
	Include simulation results with output waveforms.
	Check the calculated results against your simulation.

PCB Layout

In this section, write a brief summary of the steps followed to generate the PCB layout of the circuit. Include a printout for the PCBs.

Experimental Results

In this section, write the chip (device) numbers used in the project and how the project was tested. Mention if it was successfully done and how well the circuit functioned.

Conclusion

	In this section, report the problems (difficulties) you encountered in the simulation, experimentation, and calculations.
	Mention if your design met the requirement and was successfully done, i.e. experimental verifications are in agreement with the simulation results.
	Overall, discuss what you learned.

References

In this section, write down any reference materials you used in writing this report. For example, data sheet for a device (TTL data book, TI data book, etc), a book you used in the library, etc. You may use the format

P.W. Tuinenga, SPICE, A Guide to Circuit Simulation and Analysis, Prentice Hall, 1988, PP 85-104.

Notice

The Writing Center Tutors are available to help students with their projects Monday-Thursday from 3:30-6:00 in ET314. Students can reserve an appointment by signing up on the list posted in the hall or can walk in if the tutor is free.

Tutors are trained to help students define their purposes and audiences, generate ideas, and figure out ways to "re-see" and revise their documents.

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This page was last modified August 12, 1998
Please contact John Schild (jhs@engr.iupui.edu) concerning this site.