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

PCB BASICS Improve PCB Layout With SKILL UTILITY PROGRAMS PCB design bottlenecks are reduced using customized tools. by ARBEL NISSAN Faster time to market is crucial in the development and manufacturing of every new product. Many studies indicate that there is a relationship between project profitability and success, and the time it takes to get from the original idea until the product is available in the market. All groups involved in the development of a product are responsible for assessing how they can contribute to shortening a product’s time-tomarket. This article offers an original solution applied during PCB design that significantly contributes to the reduction of work time the process takes to get a product to market. Today’s competitive market poses not only technical challenges, but also business challenges to engineers and product developers alike. On the technical side, new technologies are constantly emerging and product complexity increases, challenging R&D engineers who are required to obtain better performance from their products. On the business side, in today’s market when a product so quickly becomes obsolete, it is essential to shorten project times to achieve the goal of minimum time-to-market (TTM). PCB design sometimes can cause a bottleneck in the project development cycle. Both the PCB fabricator and the assembly company use the output of the design process. In fact, this stage finalizes hardware development in the project and is the first step in PCB fabrication and assembly. The electrical design process sometimes takes longer than planned, shifting pressure to the design bureau. Effective, fast processes at this stage will reduce design time, thus contributing to improved TTM and lower NRE costs. PCBs are designed using Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software. This software consists of a set of elementary commands for executing a design, but also is equipped with powerful customization tools that enable users to develop dedicated applications using advanced programming languages, which shorten both processing time and overall project time. 24 Despite the differences in every design project, there are actions throughout the design process that are an integral part of each project. The content of the action may be different from project to project, but the work methodology is identical. For example, near the end of the design process, it is necessary to prepare the legend pattern that will be screen printed or inkjet applied onto the PCB. The content of this pattern will differ from board to board, but the method for executing this work is always the same. In this case, it would be worthwhile to develop auxiliary software that could be used by PCB designers for executing this action. Today, EDA tools generic functionality can effectively cover 90% of the design of a PCB. The remaining 10% is the key to success, and can be achieved by the full integration of customized tools. The following are some examples of service programs developed using the Skill language, which are applied in the Cadence Allegro PCB work environment. All programs run using the editor’s original toolbar, which has been expanded for this purpose. AutoText Orient facilitates the automatic global or local orientation of text on the PCB based on the decision of the designer concerning the relative angle and area that needs to be altered. The program significantly improves the definition and assembly of screen printing on the board. Instead of manually defining the printout on each component, the application analyzes the state of the existing text in terms of orientation and turns it automatically, at the click of a button, based on the user’s request. In PCBs with high pin count – over 10,000 for example – this translates to a savings of several workdays. Producing the Gerber files at the end of the PCB design process that is used for transferring the PCB design to production requires significant time and accuracy on the part of the designer. Auto Gerber is a service program that produces MAY 2008 PRINTED CIRCUIT DESIGN & FAB

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

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - May 2008 Contents Our Line Market Watch Around the World Happenings ROI EMC For the Real World PCB East Conference Brochure Positive Plating Don't Let your Signals Stub Their Toes Improve PCB Layout With Skill Utility Programs The Next Generation Design Tool Challenge Thermally Conductive Microwave Materials PCB Dielectric Degradation in Lead-Free Assembly Applications A Tale of Two Trade Shows Eliminating Board Defects Off the Shelf Marketplace Ad Index BGA Bulletin

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - May 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.