Printed Circuit Design & Fab - December 2008 - (Page 24)

CO-dESiGn electronic system Design ECAD-MCAD collaboration supports bidirectional communication that can shorten design times, reduce errors and bring competitive products to market faster. by JOHN ISAAC Product development requires a coordinated effort by many members of multiple disciplined design teams. We tend to focus on the design of the PCB, which is an extremely important element of the product, but it takes more than just the PCB to put a product into the marketplace (FIGURE 1). Many products require custom IC design or multiple FPGAs, software must be written and tested on the hardware and a mechanical enclosure, backplane and display must be designed; everything has to fit together with the PCB. Manufacturing the entire product must involve all members in the design process to ensure that the product can quickly reach production volumes and hit the target market window. One of the most important aspects of designing a product is to coordinate the design of the PCB and the enclosure. Performing these designs in parallel, with constant communication between the disciplines, is absolutely necessary to achieve the most compact, highest-performance and highestreliability end product while reaching the market window without extensive prototyping and re-spins. Both the elec- tronics design (ECAD) and the mechanical enclosure design (MCAD) are very complex processes (FIGURE 2) requiring not just the physical design, but also many types of analysis and simulation, and the respective designs are highly related. For example, a change to the PCB can affect the mechanical enclosure or the cooling of the electronics in the enclosure, both mechanical design problems. Collaboration Required Collaboration is the bidirectional communication of information with the opportunity to negotiate a proposal. Collaboration between ECAD and MCAD has existed as long a product design has; it originated as paper being passed back and forth. Standards have been developed to take en masse data dumps from one domain into the other. For example, at the beginning of the PCB design process, IDF or DXF standard format data was used to transfer the board outline, mounting holes and keepouts (a result of the initial enclosure Figure 1 - The product design process requires the coordination many disciplines and design teams. Figure 1 1. The product design process requires the coordinaFIGURE - The product design process requires the coordination many disciplines and design teams. tion of many disciplines and design teams. FIGURE 2.Both ECAD and MCAD are complex design, analysis and verification Figure 2 Ð Both eCaD and MCaD are complex design, analysis processes. and verification processes. DECEMBER 2008 24 printEd CirCuit dESign & fAB

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Printed Circuit Design & Fab - December 2008

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - December 2008 Contents Our Line Market Watch Around the World Happenings ROI Global Sourcing EMC for the Real World Interconnect Strategies On the Forefront Final Finish Forum Test and Inspection Electronic System Design Data Management 101 Designers Take on Technology Challenges in 2008 PCB Signal Integrity, Power Integrity and EMC Challenges What’s in a Name? Ad Index PCB Dielectric Materials for High-Speed Applications Off the Shelf Marketplace BGA Bulletin

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - December 2008

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