...that the least people here need to pass any standards! Of course, you can put the whole circuit onto a double sided board, and it might work. Yes, even a bread board design might work, somehow. But that's not the point. The standards were postulated to make your product RELIABLY work. And that's something totally different. It means, that your product has not only to work well on your living room desk, but even in the harshest industrial environment. And that is really something totally different!!

I wonder how in all seriousness people want to be able to pass the CE radiation test with a large double sided board with many cables leaving it. Usually the common mode noise is such huge, that even proper shielding and filtering will not work. Then, only a multilayer board AND filters and eventually the shielding of an metal enclosure in combination with shielded cables will do the job.

You might wonder why standards are like they are. Do you think, that a multilayer board passes the CE radiation test and the double sided board not happens haphazardly? No, the standards were chosen in such a way, that only the multilayer board will succeed, to force the designer to take a multilayer board for his application and by this to achieve the highest possible level of EMI suppression.

You might also ask, whether this high standard is needed. I can tell you: Yes, it is absolutely needed! Even with CE products the failure rate in industrial environment is rather high. What do you think will your customer do when your product doesn't work properly and he loses a lot of money and some of his customers as consequence, only because you wanted to be smart by making everything "working" on a double sided board??

If everything you make is toys and you don't have the customers breathing down your neck, well than toy arround with a double sided board. But if you are a professional and a mistake can kick you out of business, then I would highly recommend to use a multilayer board from scratch.

Kai