Electronic and Mechanical Design The Cross Design Domain of PCB Design

Electronic and Mechanical Design The Cross Design Domain of PCB Design

Cross design field

The integration of electronic and mechanical design is inevitable. Most PCB designs are not only affected by the components installed on them, but also by the space they can occupy. There is only one PCB in many products today. In these cases, the size and shape of a PCB are rarely determined by its functionality, but mainly by the shell of its packaging. In fact, in some cases, especially in consumer products, the shape and size of the final product also determine the available space of PCB and all components on it. In this case, mechanical design will dominate the design of these two fields. However, the interaction between mechanical CAD tools and electronic CAD tools is very limited at present.

Suppliers of electronic design tools are more focused on the complexity of electronic design, while their counterparts, mechanical tool suppliers, are also striving to improve mechanical design tools, making full use of the processing and graphics capabilities of the latest PCs and desktops. Nowadays, it is common for mechanical design engineers to use 3D to display their designs and render them in real time. As a means to improve design efficiency, we can't deny the value of displaying the products designed by engineers in a 3D environment, and such display also supports real-time viewing angle switching.

In addition, when the IC continues to reduce its size, it is difficult or impossible to reduce the size of other supported components. Specifically, the basic principles limit the physical dimensions of passive components such as transformers, resistors, capacitors and inductors. The connectors that are no longer widely used in electronic devices are also subject to many physical restrictions, such as the extent to which they can be reduced in size, and where they must be placed on the circuit board. What we can benefit from is that there are many 3D models of standard components such as passive components and connectors, which can be used in a growing number of CAD software packages.

The extensive creation of these 3D models shows the new efforts made by suppliers to integrate electronic design with mechanical design. Many people in the industry believe that such integration will continue and will significantly improve the design efficiency of engineers in both fields.

Perhaps the most significant progress in achieving full integration is the introduction of design interaction protocols that both electronic design and mechanical design tool suppliers can confidently adopt. Although several integration attempts have been made in the past in these two fields, they have been hampered by the lack of cooperation between suppliers, resulting in an increasing complexity. However, with the introduction of STEP (Product Model Data Interaction Standard), especially the definition of 3D model in AP214, the exchange of design data has become simple. The MCAD field has rapidly implanted the STEP AP214 model into their tools, but the E-CAD field has not yet done so. However, Altium Designer, the unified design environment from Altium, can really support the import/export and generation of STEP files. Combined with its comprehensive PCB design function, Altium Designer can improve the design efficiency of all electronic engineers to a new level. PCB assembly and PCB processing manufacturers explain the cross design field of electronic and mechanical PCB design.