As electronic products and the processes used to create them evolve, the fundamentally dissimilar worlds of electronic and mechanical design need to work in harmony. Staying completive in today’s market means using design systems that unify the design process and allow the smooth flow of design data across the electro-mechanical divide.
The changing design landscape
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last decade you’ll be more than aware of the ongoing and increasingly rapid change in the way electronic products are developed and produced. In today’s global market the pressure to create smaller, more intelligent products in less time is forcing design engineers to critically reassess and revise the overall design process – from concept right through to manufacture.
The need for change is further fuelled by the even more rapid development of electronics technology, which in a series of evolutionary steps, has altered the fundamental processes we use to create today’s electronic products. The emerging challenge for product development teams is managing and working with these increasingly interdependent processes while meeting production deadlines.
Following on from the electronics revolution created by the introduction of cost-effective microprocessors has been the ongoing movement of product functionality and hardware into the software realm. The emergence of a soft design paradigm has blurred the lines between the design disciplines while opening the door for even more intelligent products to be created using fewer devices and with the right tools, within shorter timeframes. The end result is today’s products continue to shrink in size and offer higher levels of functionality, but in the process pose new design challenges for the teams that develop them.
As more elements of a design move into the soft realm, decisions such as which parts in a design run in software, hardware or indeed ‘soft’ hardware has created the need for a higher level interaction between all stages of electronic design. Traditional product development design processes, where design information is passed between separate and often disparate applications, resist the design interaction and cohesive data management needed for an efficient design flow.
Bringing all these elements together at a platform level -- unifying the electronic development process -- creates the environment required for true design interaction and collaboration in all stages of electronic design flow. By incorporating the processes needed in a single application, a unified electronic development system shares design data at a native level and manages design information globally. The seamless flow of information between design stages opens the door to flexible, interactive and innovative design practices that support a fluid division between hardware and software.
The efficiencies and high level of design collaboration delivered by a unified electronic product development system extend to all levels of the design flow – from concept though to manufacture. The central control of design information and data allows all those involved in the product development process to work in a connected and collaborative way, all the way though to document handling, parts management and manufacturing.
In the bigger picture, the need for effective design collaboration extends to those outside the sphere of electronic design. An increasingly important part of the evolution in product development is interaction between the electronic and mechanical aspects of a design, where the incessant need for smaller and more functional packaging forces the two to be intimately connected – in both physical sense and in their development.
Board assemblies now typically hold all of the external hardware such as connectors, keypads and displays while the product case assembly neatly exposes these to the user. Gone are the days when a product case merely housed the electronic assemblies and the separate hardware elements were connected via inter-wiring. In short, packaging has now moved from being a simple container to a tightly-integral part of the product.
Coverging MCAD-ECAD design
More than ever before then, a product’s packaging must take into account the physical aspects of the internal electronics while in turn, the electronics assembly – in practice the board design – must allow for the physical style and functionality of the package design. This increased interdependency of design processes is in line with overall trend in electronic product development, where previously isolated stages in the design flow must now efficiently interact. From design capture through to manufacturing, maintaining a competitive edge in the market requires tools and processes that support collaboration at all levels of development.
Efficiently bridging the gap between the mechanical and electronic design processes is therefore becoming crucial for collaborative and successful product development. However, rather than simply passing raw dimensioning and positional data from the ECAD to MCAD environment, what’s needed is design tools that allow a bi-directional flow of comprehensive 3D data between those domains. In the ECAD world this means an ability to import and seamless integrate 3D component data from an MCAD environment, then pass a full and accurate 3D representation of the board assembly back to the MCAD domain.
This higher-level process also offers the opportunity of passing comprehensive, component-inclusive board data to the mechanical design environment earlier in the product development cycle, allowing ECAD-MCAD co-design. What’s more, the gain in design-flow efficiency is further enhanced by the reduced need for a prototype board assembly to be on hand during MCAD design stage. With comprehensive 3D data exchange, the mechanical designer can have full dimensional information on hand even if the board is still being routed in the ECAD environment.
To harness this potential, while preparing your design system for the ongoing convergence in the MCAD and ECAD worlds, the minimum requirement is an electronics design system that supports 3D modeling at the component level. This ability plus facilities to export accurate 3D design data supports the necessary interaction between the mechanical and electrical environments while delivering the productivity benefits of collaborative MCAD-ECAD co-design.
Electro-mechanical design flow
As electronic products shrink in size, production deadlines shorten and the industry moves towards ‘soft’ electronic design solutions the ability to efficiently share information across all design processes is becoming crucial. Altium Designer’s unified product development environment offers this capability at a fundamental level through its ability to complete all stages of electronic design – hardware, programmable hardware and embedded software – within a single environment.
Altium has extended this capability with advanced 3D systems that smoothly interface with the mechanical aspects of product design by allowing design engineers to develop and exchange accurate 3D modeling information. In line with the latest developments Altium Designer offers the ability to import 3D component model data via the well-established IGES format and with the latest 6.6 release, the new advanced STEP format.
When coupled with Altium Designer’s 3D PCB viewer and comprehensive design data export capabilities, which can pass the complete 3D assembly to the MCAD environment as an IGES or STEP file, the system allows a high degree of integration between the ECAD and MCAD worlds. This in turn allows MCAD designers to start the mechanical design earlier and even proceed in parallel with the electronics design process – ECAD-MCAD co-design – since reliable and accurate 3D design data can be exchanged between the domains at any time.
The end result is a new level of efficiency and cooperation between the MCAD and ECAD worlds which simplifies the mechanical design process, increases product quality and offers the potential of higher productivity across the entire electronic product development process – from initial concept right through to manufacture.
For those accustomed to working in the traditional 2D space of design capture and board design it’s now important to consider the benefits of embracing the 3D design space and its relationship to the entire production chain. The ability to display, exchange and work with 3D rendered objects in your electronic design system is not just a nice add-on feature set and is certainly not a gimmick. As design disciplines converge and collaborate at a higher level, it has now become an inherent and essential part of the electronic product development process that will play an increasingly important role into the future.
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