When I am troubleshooting new PCB's I have a unique technique for finding shorts on PCB's.  I actually have to hand the credit for this technique to a business partner, Dr. Ed Kafrissen.  He came up with a few non-traditional ways of doing business, and this is one of them.

So let me set up a scenario for you, and then show you Ed's solution.  Suppose you have a client and you need to deliver 100 PCB's to him/her quickly.  You have someone stuff the boards for you, now you have to verify they work.  One of the first tests we would do is to apply power to the new PCB and bring the voltage up slowly.  If the power supplies load down, then you got a problem to solve.  You got a short on the PCB.

Ed came up with unique solution.  We had this old humongous power supply lying around that was capable of suppling 30v at up to 5 amperes.  This technique only works if the power supply, like ours, has an adjustment to limit the voltage and current.  We would set the voltage to necessary voltage and the current all the way down.  Ed would then hook up the PCB, which immediately loaded down the current limited supply.  He would turn up the current on the supply and feel on the PCB for a hot spot!  Invariably some IC would be stuffed in backwards that our visual inspection did not find, or we would get a PCB which was not completely etched.  In those days we got horrendous PCB's.

Anyway, that was Ed's solution to quickly find shorts on a PCB.  And it worked well as long as you were careful enough to not burn yourself!  Yeow!