It’s about time!
CAD companies and component manufacturers have been slow to bridge the gap between tools to design PCB's and the data required to properly install their parts into designs.
I have been in the design arena for over 30 years now, and the process of creating CAD data from manufacturers is still not much better than when I entered this industry. You might be interested to note that a recent survey found that 30% of a prototype PCB design is taken up with selecting components and then getting them into the CAD tools for actual design work to take place. Smaller design teams tend to spend even more time managing the part data.
Finally selecting components that are in stock and competitively priced is obtainable by the majority of CAD users with integration to suppliers such as the Design-Link System available from Farnell. With the purchase of CadSoft by Farnell, I look to see even more integration of design information in the CAD screen. Did you know that in August of 2008 the IPC asserted that 75 percent of the impact of a manufacturability of a design takes place in the design phase. Therefore tight integration between manufacturers and design tools is a must.
30 years ago, I was happy with a PDF sheet describing the part size, the pin names, the signal types etc. Now I do not have time to waste entering all of that data into a tool by hand. A natural next step in the integration process is to provide CAD data in a format that all CAD tools can read.
Currently some vendors like Texas Instruments and Samtec are providing libraries for at least some of their parts in at least a few CAD formats. This is a daunting task to undertake with the speed that CAD tools change and the lack of an industry backed standard for information transfer. Other vendors like National Semiconductor and Microchip are providing data in a single format that can be converted to many tool sets.
I hope to see adoption by other manufacturers a data transfer method that is both tool neutral and machine readable for critical part data that is manually entered by the majority of their customers now. Lets face it. There is no technical reason why 3D models, electrical and physical data for all board mount components, simulation and thermal models are not available for PCB Parts today. It is not there because the design community has not demanded it!
What do you think?
Frank Frank
Accelerated-Designs Inc.
