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Parent page: ECAD-MCAD CoDesign
Building a device from a number of assemblies is the standard approach to developing a product in mechanical CAD software. Altium's electronic design software supports a similar concept, where multiple PCBs can be bought together to create an assembly of PCBs, called a Multi-Board Assembly. This assembly can also include the enclosure.
A multi-board assembly open in Altium's Multi-board Assembly editor.
The process of assembling the PCBs into the enclosure is best performed in MCAD. But the ECAD engineer may also need to perform electro-mechanical checks; such as component-to-component and component-to-enclosure clearances, as well as checking the access to and labeling of the human interface elements, such as indicators and displays, buttons, and connectors.
There are numerous advantages to being able to synchronize an assembly of boards between the MCAD and ECAD domains, so that the current state of the assembled device can be quickly verified by both the mechanical and electronic design teams.
The slides below show a summary of synchronizing a Multi-board assembly between MCAD and ECAD. This order of steps is not fixed, for example, the slides show a sequence where the individual PCBs have been Pulled from ECAD and assembled into the MCAD enclosure, before deciding to transfer the entire assembly to ECAD.
Push the Individual PCBs from ECADEach PCB must be Pushed from ECAD, Pulled into MCAD, and saved as an assembly. Push the ECAD Multi-board AssemblyInclude the individual PCBs in the ECAD Multi-board assembly (their position can be left undefined) and Push the MBA from ECAD. Create the Device Assembly in MCADInclude the enclosure and one or more of the PCB MCAD assemblies (alternatively, the PCBs can be added later). Recognize the PCBsIf one or more of the PCB assemblies has been added, clicking this button tells CoDesigner that each of the PCBs that it can detect is part of this MCAD device assembly. Link MultiboardIf the PCBs have been recognized, you can link the MCAD device assembly to the ECAD Multi-board Assembly by selecting the Link Multiboard command from the dropdown menu at the top of the Altium CoDesigner panel, as shown above. If the PCBs have not been recognized yet, use the Link Multiboard button on the Altium CoDesigner panel. Define the EnclosureSelect the enclosure in the MCAD feature tree, then click the Enclosure button on the Altium CoDesigner ribbon. CoDesigner now recognizes this part/assembly as the enclosure and will indicate this in the Multiboard Definition section of the Altium CoDesigner panel. Push the Assembly from MCADCoDesigner pushes the location and orientation of each PCB to ECAD, along with the enclosure if it has been defined. Pull the Assembly into ECADPull the finished assembly into ECAD in the MCAD CoDesigner panel in the Multi-board Assembly editor in ECAD. The Completed Assembly in ECADThe engineer can now examine the finished Multi-board Assembly in ECAD. |
Below is a different sequence, where the MCAD device enclosure is linked to the ECAD MBA and the PCBs are then added to the device enclosure.
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