I am learning to design PCBs, and while I have a basic understanding of the components (viz. resistors, diodes, transistors, etc) as the board gets populated with more components, (consider, for instance, an arduino dev board), it is just very challenging to build a model of how the entire board works - the logic etc.
Further, a good part of modern microcontroller boards is dedicated to (I think), power delivery and conditioning.
Getting a functional model / representation of the entire board in my head has been a huge, as yet insurmountable, challenge.
Are there any good games that can help me wrap my head around these concepts?
You should think in subsystems. Design a module, and then think of it as a basic component (like a resistor or a microcontroller is a component). Do not keep thinking about all the parts it is composed of. Use the power of abstraction.
Thats one of the really nice parts of shields. They make it very easy to think about the high level modules.
The hard part of designing PCB's was finding components. I tried to build one, but by the time I finally had a design one of the IC's would be out of stock, and I'd have to find a replacement. The downstream effects of that change would take time to deal with, and when I finally finished I'd run into the same issue again. I ended up just giving up.
I wish the PCB design software let me stay on this module level.
Engineers will deliberately break things up into subsystems on the board. Engineering is about making a safe and effective product in a timeframe (read: budget) suitable for the customer, it's not about perfection. You are allowed to approximate.
You can see this on some PCBs where a decision has clearly been made to separate (say) two different digital subsystems, which could be more efficient if mingled, but is only feasible for their resources if designed and verified separately.
I am learning to design PCBs, and while I have a basic understanding of the components (viz. resistors, diodes, transistors, etc) as the board gets populated with more components, (consider, for instance, an arduino dev board), it is just very challenging to build a model of how the entire board works - the logic etc.
Further, a good part of modern microcontroller boards is dedicated to (I think), power delivery and conditioning.
Getting a functional model / representation of the entire board in my head has been a huge, as yet insurmountable, challenge.
Are there any good games that can help me wrap my head around these concepts?