Can rapid prototyping be considered for reducing development time and costs - and more importantly for expanding market horizons? R&D departments worldwide are reevaluating where productivity can be increased and design costs reduced. Available ways of performing rapid prototyping are suddenly getting a fresh look.
The idea of prototyping has been in the industry awhile and it hasn't exactly been a savior to date for a number of reasons. The disconnected nature of most EDA tools in the industry has resulted in a myriad of differing types of design data that must be waded through, organized and managed around. Complicated software configuration management is normally needed. Instead, let's consider what can be done from a more unified design perspective and rapid prototyping.
This search turned up some compelling results that are hard to dismiss - layout of PCBs that went from one month to days, and design throughput that doubled. That's what Bent Christensen, Senior Engineer of Innovation and Prototyping at Bang and Olufsen, producers of high-end audio, video, and multi-media products discovered. Designs finished in half the normal time.
Focusing on why they needed the ability for rapid prototyping with the least amount of fuss sheds light on the importance of beginning with a unified approach. "We normally start with one idea, and then change to another because there was something we hadn't thought of. We keep making changes until we get it right. There are so many things we need to consider when developing", comments Christensen. It sounds simple enough but it's not with traditional systems.
A fundamental premise of a unified approach is to streamline the design process by letting engineers snap together reusable intellectual property so they can move onto developing functional intelligence and then a working mechanical model. Often the real test is to quickly find the appropriate architecture for the actual prototype so it's critical to allow concept exploration without the constraints of fixed hardware. This is only really possible with a single design process, a single coherent data model of the design start to finish, and single data store. This effectively eliminates the chore of generating, collating and managing all the design data.
There will, of course, still be a need for a repository and versioning control. But the design flow goes from requiring an extensive software configuration management system to something more along the lines of a design release process. And it becomes substantially easier to manage.
Working within a unified environment also affords the ability to work live with a design - meaning the ability to create, design, prototype and test on-the-fly and in real-time. Changes made in a single domain are reflected throughout the entire design. So when the team has to change various materials and designs, they do not have the reformatting or revision problems that typically impede development. Changes that flow through to the prototyped model are nearly instant and can be visualized immediately.
Using a live environment opens up doors for creativity as well. There is the ability to design and test software and hardware components using real-time manufacturing checking. Being able to identify and report inconsistencies in drawings, predict potential problems that can happen during full-scale production and then make manufacturability improvements means the design never even has to go out of house.
Additionally, companies usually have their production libraries and components, and their own kind of styling. This is very important to them maintaining the uniqueness of the products they develop. Being able to link to external databases and draw a company's own footprints onto the schematic means it can be ensured that components will fit precisely. If components need to be changed and redesigned, or mediums re-evaluated or trade-offs happen, it's easier.
Engineers who previously worked in isolation designing the schematics might find themselves working in close collaboration with the mechanical team using real-time MCAD collaboration technology. At Bang and Olufsen, unique mechanical casings used to be a real challenge but not anymore. "We now easily place up-to-date, pre-approved components straight onto the schematic and then use a 3D visualization engine to make sure boards fit into their cases. This reduces our MCAD-ECAD revisions to a single clearance checking procedure and allows us to complete our designs quicker and with more confidence", says Christensen.
So the ability to do concept exploration and rapid prototyping transforms the ordinary engineering team normally used to working in isolation into an "ideas factory" where new ideas for products become real working prototypes built in-house. With this improved team collaboration, there is better release coordination. Companies like Bang and Olufsen discovered that while they still have the same number of design revisions, depending on the complexity, revisions themselves were made much faster.
Switching to a unified approach means that a company's mainstream development can be boosted significantly by allowing all aspects of electronic product development to be designed and managed within a single system. Engineers can focus instead on higher-level applications, see the product as they are building it, and reuse both their existing work and third-party technology. All without sacrificing innovation or increasing design times.
The result is a smoother path from concept to manufacture without having to send designs outside or relying on extensive configuration management systems. Requiring minimal effort to move the final design to production, rapid prototyping can be the mechanism for bringing products to market quickly and without the need for full, custom board designs.
Understanding how rapid prototyping is critical as a tool for exploring new ideas underscores the benefits and importance of considering fresh ways of thinking, especially in the uncertainty of today's business climate.
