D+I Part of Capgemini is a leading product design and development firm that excels in transforming complex challenges into market-ready solutions. With a commitment to innovation and quality, the team has earned over 260 local and international awards for their design and engineering excellence.

D+I's portfolio reflects a remarkable versatility across a broad spectrum of industries. Their work spans the healthcare sector with innovative medical device designs for Siemens Healthcare and Trajan Scientific & Medical, to business product solutions for corporate giants like Honeywell and RØDE. They also support the development of products in consumer markets, automotive, vehicular robotics, marine, aviation, and mass commuter transit systems. Their holistic approach spans every aspect of product development, including industrial design, mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, and software development.

Streamlining Component Management Across Projects

D+I faced a challenge in effectively managing and reusing components across various projects. Before using Altium 365, their traditional methods involved using local libraries or networked systems, which relied heavily on manual documentation and verbal communication among team members.

To address this challenge, D+I turned to Altium 365’s Cloud Libraries, which allowed the team to store and reuse all of their components from a central location and accelerate their development process. 

D+I utilized Altium 365’s Managed Components, which provided templates to standardize the component creation process and ensured all parameters were accurately populated. Defined lifecycles guided component usability, improving decision-making regarding component selection. The Where-Used functionality also delivered valuable insights into the placement of components across all of the team’s projects.

Standardizing Guidelines for Component Creation & Use

D+I also needed to define internal guidelines and workflows for using Altium’s tools across their client’s projects. Standardization was essential to ensuring consistency and efficiency in the creation and review of components and was pivotal to maintaining a high-quality design process.

To address this challenge, D+I adopted Altium 365’s Managed Lifecycle Approval to facilitate the definition of a structured process for component management within the firm. This process was implemented directly in Altium 365 and also documented in Confluence, ensuring that all team members had easy access to up-to-date guidelines and procedures.

The ability to define and manage lifecycle definitions provided clear visibility of the various states each component could undergo. This feature was instrumental in standardizing how components were handled from creation to approval and deployment in projects. The team’s lifecycle flows were built visually, which helped team members to efficiently update their processes as changes were needed. 

Enhancing Collaboration Between Electronic and Mechanical Teams

To overcome their collaboration challenges, D+I implemented Altium 365’s Commenting and Tasks feature to transform how the team reviewed design projects. By enabling team members to engage in design conversations directly within the context of a project, all comments were digitally captured and pinned to specific design assets. This ensured that no part of a conversation was lost or misplaced, enhancing clarity and follow-up actions.

Altium 365’s Browser-based Access and Sharing capabilities allowed team members to access, measure, search, cross-probe, and comment on designs from any device without the need for an ECAD license. This accessibility meant that project files were always available, regardless of the team member’s location.

MCAD CoDesigner was also a key tool in tightly integrating D+I’s electronic and mechanical teams. CoDesigner enabled bi-directional design data sharing and communications between ECAD and MCAD tools, and helped the team to reduce misalignments and errors between their electrical and mechanical designs.