CircuiTree - August 2008 - (Page 26)

Creating Connections Between Electronics Design and Manufacturing Once programmed, the pin conﬁguration of every FPGA is unique and likely to change during the course of the design development (see Figure 2). processes become interdependent and at the least must successfully share design data. From a practical board design perspective, the embedded hardware design information needs to be incorporated into the layout as FPGA pin data and its associated electrical constraints, as these fundamentally inﬂuence the routing process. Changes in the FPGA design generate disruptive routing challenges and a further exchange of design data between the FPGA-PCB domains, creating a potentially cumbersome and error-prone design workﬂow. In a similar way, the mechanical parts of the design—in the simplest sense, a housing or enclosure—determine the dimensional properties of the board, creating the need for another data ﬂow between the domains. Changes in the mechanical design will trigger board design revisions, imposing further delays and complexity in the product development workﬂow. When design systems involved exist as a traditional collection of separate process silos, effectively sharing design data information becomes a signiﬁcant problem in its own right. If the ﬁle exchange systems exist to successfully translate and propagate the data—and this is not guaranteed—the information can be passed over the wall to the next design domain and process. A conventional product design system that exists as a disparate group of design tools silos already sufferers from the inefﬁciencies of a sequential workﬂow, and adding further layers of data exchange—such as that between MCAD and ECAD—serves to compound those problems. The struggle to bring the mechanical (MCAD) and electrical (ECAD) design worlds together has been hampered by the very different nature of the two design disciples. Unlike the common electronic relationship between embedded development and board design, mechanical design traditionally exists in a very different head space to electronic design. The fundamental differences between mechanical and electrical CAD tools tend to reﬂect this gap, which in the past has negatively impacted the common ground of design data exchange formats. Figure 2 The MCAD and ECAD Parts of a Design Are Now Interdependent, Need to Be Easily Synchronized Using 3D Design Environments Taking the higher level view, the changes that are affecting today’s board designs have moved away from the better-smaller electronics device path and more to an approach that achieves sustainable product differentiation in the market: namely the move to a soft-centric design within programmable devices, with less emphasis on IP contained within the physical hardware design. Ultimately, real and sustainable product differentiation lies in the way a product looks, feels, and functions. Today’s competitive products—those that exhibit a differentiating edge amongst competitors—are more than ever deﬁned by the user experience, which can be described by that product’s form and function. This critical connection between the product and user is deﬁned by factors such as aesthetics, ergonomics, and its functional behavior, which are in turn established by the mechanical and software (but not the board) design of that product. The mechanical aspects of a product design now directly and profoundly inﬂuence the electronic design by determining the board shape, size, and positioning of its components and, in many cases, by also deﬁning the type of components used and how the software should behave. Complex board shapes and ﬂexible board materials are physical evidence of the intimate ties between the mechanical case design and the board assembly it houses. This trend makes the interaction between the design domains more important than ever because the competitive success of a product can now hinge on the effectiveness of that electrical and mechanical design cooperation. Information Paths In practice, the need for ECAD and MCAD design data transfer has been addressed at a simple level by the use of common ﬁle formats that pass basic dimensional information between the design applications in each domain. The development of 3D MCAD design during the 1970s, and then solid modelling in the ‘80s, has been paralleled by the introduction of a bewildering range of data exchange formats. These vary widely in capability and accuracy, with few formats ideally suited to exchanging comprehensive 3D data to the ECAD domain. The result is an ECADMCAD design ﬂow that tends to exist at a basic level and relies on a range of different ﬁle exchange formats, depending on the MCAD and ECAD applications in use. Traditionally this means the dimensional and object positioning data from one application are processed and transferred to the other via a range of 2D and 3D ﬁle formats, as milestone events. In workﬂow terms, for example, basic PCB shape details might pass from MCAD to ECAD, then, at a later stage, a simple 3D model ﬁle of the board assembly is passed from ECAD to MCAD to check the mechanical ﬁt between the board and enclosure. With each of these steps, suitable design modiﬁcations are made, and another data exchange is usually 28 You Are No Longer Alone The overall message here is that the task of creating today’s successful products must involve the close interaction between the all the elements—electrical, mechanical, and software—of a design. This represents the broader and pervasive uniﬁcation of the product design processes, including PCB design, which is needed to meet the challenge of creating the next generation of electronic products. So where does this leave the process of PCB design for today’s products? The ﬁrst certainty is that board design can no longer exist in isolation from the soft (software and embedded hardware) and mechanical design processes. As the design disciplines converge, the 26 August 2008 • circuitree.com http://circuitree.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CircuiTree - August 2008

CirciuTree - August 2008 Contents My Line Industry Review Tech Talk Flexible Thinking Creating Connections Between Electronics Design and Manufacturing Happy Thoughts View From the Middle Market Outlook Fein Lines IPCA Showcase Technical Product Spotlights Classified Ads Upcoming Events Ad Index Buyers Guide

CircuiTree - August 2008

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