PCB DESIGN BEST PRACTICES

ECAD/MCAD Co-Design

Efficient collaboration between ECAD and MCAD domains enables both to optimize their electronics designs within tight form-factor constraints while still meeting quality, reliability, and performance requirements.

ECAD/MCAD co-design overview

It’s critical that ECAD and MCAD engineers collaborate throughout the product
design cycle, regardless of the design tools they use. An integrated ECAD/MCAD collaboration environment enables electrical & mechanical design teams to work together throughout the entire design process in real time.

Key features

Collaboration with MCAD systems
Xpedition Layout facilitates the communication of design data to mechanical CAD systems using a ProSTEP-approved data exchange standard. With this ECAD/MCAD collaboration, designers can communicate between disciplines at any time or frequency, keeping participants in their respective system’s comfort zone.

Collaborate from within your environment
ECAD and MCAD designers can collaborate from within their native environments, eliminating the need to learn new tools.

3D visualization
Visualization of the PCB and its enclosure within the layout environment allows designers to optimize the layout based on mechanical and manufacturability constraints.

Preview proposed changes
To clearly identify a proposed design change, designers highlight the proposed ECAD/MCAD collaboration object within the 3D viewer before applying the modification in their design. Consistent, iterative communication ensures team synchronization.

Cloud-enabled remote collaboration

Confidently share lightweight representations of design data and other files with colleagues and remote stakeholders in a secure cloud workspace available through an authenticated web login. Powerful engineering-centric viewers make it easy to visualize and markup files and engineering models to help keep extended teams aligned. Powered by Teamcenter Share.

Dive deeper into this topic

image - eda - ecad/mcad blog

Look for a methodology that enables context based, integral collaboration between the ECAD and MCAD domains. The value you’re going to get from that is that you have streamlined, integrated collaboration that minimizes the risk of errors during the data exchange. Read more in our ECAD/MCAD co-design blog or listen to our ECAD/MCAD co-design podcast.

ECAD/MCAD Co-design

Resources