> I am starting to warm to the idea of drawing a power tree for even pretty simple power schemes like this one
I'm laughing/crying right now because of a board I had to deal with last week at $JOB. Pretty beefy power distribution board with some... quirks related to load shedding etc. Details don't matter there. I ended up drawing the whole power graph (it's not a tree, there are two independent inputs that go through ideal diode controllers for some of the rails for redundancy). By carefully rearranging the nodes of the graph I managed to get it completely planar (no overlapping edges) except for one spot where a poorly-thought-out connector did require one edge overlap.
Laying that out as a planar graph dramatically simplified routing. It's a technique I hadn't explicitly used before and it sure worked out nicely.
The other technique that comes in handy in that kind of situation, if you have multiple power/voltage/current domains that require spacing or other isolation from each other, or multiple ground references, is an isolation or insulation diagram. I don't have a great example; if you search you'll find a style that will meet medical device requirements and can be adapted for other use.
I'm laughing/crying right now because of a board I had to deal with last week at $JOB. Pretty beefy power distribution board with some... quirks related to load shedding etc. Details don't matter there. I ended up drawing the whole power graph (it's not a tree, there are two independent inputs that go through ideal diode controllers for some of the rails for redundancy). By carefully rearranging the nodes of the graph I managed to get it completely planar (no overlapping edges) except for one spot where a poorly-thought-out connector did require one edge overlap.
Laying that out as a planar graph dramatically simplified routing. It's a technique I hadn't explicitly used before and it sure worked out nicely.