QUESTIONS EVERY ENGINEERING MANAGER SHOULD ASK THEIR PCB DESIGN TEAMS TODAY

By: John McMillan

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WHY YOU SHOULD ASK:Component symbols, land patterns, and 3D models remain the building blocks for every PCB design. Designers no longer have to rely on design tools to create these essential parts from scratch, nor do they have to manually collect part data. Components and parametric data can be acquired from online portals, eliminating component building errors and reducing the time-consuming, manual, part-creation step in the traditional design flow.

It’s also important to make sure that library data is current, master libraries are leveraged, and library data is reused. Finding component prices and availability is now faster and easier than ever. Library symbols and land patterns that used to take weeks to create can now be located and downloaded, or even created from scratch, in minutes.

Just as component library data should be leveraged from design to design so should the designs themselves. Design reuse accelerates PCB design by utilizing known-good design data. For example, if your products are similar in nature you can accelerate design time by reusing layout data from other designs. This is especially true for common layout areas like physical interfaces, power supply circuitry, memory sections, and CPU breakouts with decoupling.

“It’s not the lack of resources that cause failure, it’s the lack of resourcefulness that causes failure”.

-Tony Robbins

HOW ARE YOU ACQUIRING OR CREATING PCB LIBRARY DATA?1

ARE YOU COLLABORATING WITH MCAD?

WHY YOU SHOULD ASK:The days of throwing dimensions for a PCB envelope over the wall are long gone. Today, MCAD and ECAD tools connect via data exchange files and collaborate in real-time. There is no guess work and no unexpected mistakes from changes made in one or the other design domain because both domains are kept in-sync. PCB designers work with actual MCAD data for the board outline, component locations, keep-outs, mounting holes, circuitry, and 3D models, and data is shared from both ECAD and MCAD databases. Everything the PCB and MCAD designers need to know is exchanged, checked, and synchronized. Complete product assemblies are now digitally modeled in 3D, ensuring that the PCB fits into the enclosure throughout the design process and is verified before either is fabricated.

If your product’s MCAD design is done by a third-party design firm from across town or across the globe the collaboration is the same. Real-time data exchange is not limited to a particular site nor limited to a single MCAD toolset, as it is accomplished via an industry standard exchange file format.

The benefits of creating a 3D digital model of an electronic product assembly in both ECAD and MCAD tools is now the norm. Unexpected errors and prototype builds are eliminated, saving money and getting products to market on time.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”

-Henry Ford

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WHY YOU SHOULD ASK:PCB design tools, like electronics themselves, evolve continually in both features and capabilities. For example, as 5G and DDRx technologies evolve, so must the design tools to support them. Yes, the PCB tools must evolve too. With every release, design tools should be enhanced with new features and functionality to improve or add capabilities that support the latest design and fabrication technologies.

Utilizing the latest release features is not a place where designers should become complacent. When technologies that expedite processes such as constraint and rule entry, trace routing and tuning, RF, and rigid-flex-centric are not being utilized, it’s costing you. For example, the mindsets that hand routing is best or manually entering constraint data is faster must be broken.

Design acceleration and technology-centric capabilities go hand in hand. For example, if you’re designing a PCB with rigid-flex technology your tool must include rigid-flex-centric capabilities that support stack-up regions and types for multiple board outlines. Bend area definitions, flex-aware placement, and routing, as well as 3D bend specific DRCs and signal integrity validations for complex rigid-flex topologies, must also be supported. Your PCB design tool should simplify the creation process for all types of design technologies.

“Some rules are nothing but old habits that people are afraid to change”.

-Therese Anne Fowler

ARE YOU ANALYZING AND SIMULATING DESIGNS TO ENSURE PERFORMANCE?

WHY YOU SHOULD ASK:PCB designs are not getting simpler. In fact, they are getting smaller, faster, more complicated, and include more mixed-technologies than ever. They come with modern-day challenges, including highly constrained rules-driven DRRx buses, differential pairs, clocks, TX and RX signals, and split planes with multiple voltages. These designs are also likely to include a combination of RF, WiFi, and Bluetooth circuitry.

Fortunately analysis and simulation tools can detect timing, signal, and power integrity issues before PCBs are sent out for fabrication. The days of budgeting both the time and cost of a prototype build to tweak and perfect a design is no longer the norm.

Today, achieving first-pass design success is the goal. It can be accomplished with a design flow that enables design teams to identify and eliminate signal integrity issues throughout product creation and, in turn, expedite time-to-market for your products.

When you analyze signal integrity issues like crosstalk early in the design cycle, you eliminate costly respins. Signal integrity analysis should be integrated into your design flow, and design verification should be performed from schematic design to final layout.

PCB engineers that efficiently analyze, solve, and verify critical requirements avoid costly respins, achieve faster time-to-market, and decrease costs.

“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge. “

-Lao Tzu

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ARE YOU USING ALL OF THE PCB DESIGN TOOL’S CAPABILITIES?

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HOW DO YOU ENSURE THAT THE PCB IS FABRICATION READY?

WHY YOU SHOULD ASK:Ensuring that PCB designs are fabrication ready is not something you should leave to chance. In fact, the cost and delay from a single design respin can break a competitive time-to-market sensitive product. PCB designers can and should be utilizing integrated manufacturing checks to identify and resolve issues — such as slivers, exposed copper, improper testpoint-to-testpoint spacing, and much more — during the layout phase.If these issues are not addressed in layout, fabricators may tweak the design to address a violation. When designers leave items like copper balancing or clearance violations up to the fabricators to modify, they may be putting product performance at risk. To retain control over your PCB

design’s integrity, it is essential to check your PCB layout for fabrication, testability, and assembly issues before sending it out for fabrication. You’ll create higher-quality designs, reduce manufacturing delays and design spins, cut costs, and get your product to market on time.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

― -Benjamin Franklin

HOW ARE YOU STAYING UP TO SPEED ON DESIGN TECHNOLOGIES, TRENDS AND BEST PRACTICES?

WHY YOU SHOULD ASK:Electronic technology is continually evolving. PCB design and processes must evolve too. From wearables to sensors to wireless earbuds and beyond, new products are more sophisticated, have more functionality, and are more compact than ever. The ability to understand how to implement emerging technologies, such as DDR5 and 5G, that reduce power consumption and increase bandwidth are just a part the challenge. Many products now require wireless technologies like WiFi, RF, and Bluetooth — and each of those require unique, technology-centric design capabilities.

For example, to meet product miniaturization and reliability requirements, PCBs require more rigid-flex technology than ever. To support RF, PCB tools must understand and support RF elements, requiring RF-centric PCB design capabilities for rigid-flex stack- ups, stiffeners, flex aware components, and RF-centric routing. Designers should be continually looking for ways to design faster, reduce cost, and ensure product performance.

“If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.”

- Confucius

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WHY YOU SHOULD ASK:Just as you would never consider designing a new product with old technology, PCB designers should not settle on a tool that doesn’t support the latest technologies.

In reality, PCB designers often continue using a specific design tool based on its familiarity and their experience using it, when in fact a different tool may offer features and capabilities that will accelerate layout, improve performance, and reduce respins. Is the PCB tool you’ve been using, perhaps for many years, driving your processes and PCB design flow? Or do you drive you’re design flow by selecting a tool that’s best suited for your current and future products? Again, PCB designs are getting smaller and faster, to meet this demand, technology-centric capabilities are necessary to ensure that designs are created quickly and correctly.

If your design tool does not support focused capabilities — such as MCAD collaboration, RF design, DDRx routing, DFM, rigid-flex design, high-speed routing, and tuning — your PCB layout schedules are likely much longer than necessary, and you may be planning and paying for prototype builds that can be eliminated. Engineering managers and PCB designers should review their design tool capabilities annually. If high-speed DDR routing has become a time-consuming task, or design performance issues are emerging after PCB fabrication due to lack of simulation, you most likely need to make a tool change.

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

- Albert Einstein

WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU EVALUATED THE DESIGN TOOL?7