Hi all,

I'm having three boards made for my university. The design is a SCADA
control system terminal that will sit inside a chamber and switch on and of=
f
heaters/humidifiers/stuff like that. It has all the necessary protection in
place (MOV, zeners, fueses, optoisolators, etc), most of it on the board,
where it is needed. Unfortunately, due to all the protection, LEDs, and
stuff, the board is quite large (around 6x6 inches). It's also using only
through hole components.

Here's a roughly (messily) laid out, unrouted picture of the board:
http://postimage.org/image/11z7x17dw/full/

I would like to save as much space as possible. This will probably mean
switching all the components to surface mount. There's also four huge
MOSFETS near the top right which probably wont be laying down on the board
to save space, but are outlined as such in the picture. The huge DIP packag=
e
in the middle is a UBW32 board. Other ICs are mostly 74 series logic
buffers, etc. Most of the 6 pin DIPs are optoisolators.

Note: I wouldn't know how to route this beast by hand. The autorouter route=
s
this thing fine in two layers.

What suggestions would you guys have for saving space and designing for
better efficiency?
--=20
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