Unifying ECAD and MCAD: Blurring the Lines Between Disciplines

By barb schmitz | Published: May 25, 2011

 

Nearly all products today—ranging from cars to industrial equipment to medical devices—contain some type of electronic device. The integration of electronic components in products complicates the design process because it requires the unification of what has traditionally been viewed as two diverse disciplines: electrical and mechanical engineering.

Electronics are being developed and produced faster than ever in order to stay ahead of the rising tide of demanding consumers who continuously push for smaller, more intelligent products. As the design of electronic devices becomes more complex, finding harmony between the process of electronic and mechanical design becomes more critical. In order to design complex electronics faster and better than ever, manufacturers must unify their design processes so the flow of design data across the electro-mechanical divide is smooth and efficient.

The challenge for product development teams is to manage and work with these increasingly interdependent processes—mechanical and electronic—while adhering to product timelines. All this increases the need for effective design collaboration between the electronic and mechanical aspects of a design, where the demand for smaller and more functional packaging requires the two disciplines to be completely in synch at all stages of design.

Board assemblies often now hold all of the external hardware (connectors, keypads, displays) while the product case assembly neatly exposes these to the user. As a result, packaging has evolved from being a simple container to a tightly integrated part of the product.  As a result, a product’s packaging must account for the physical aspects of the internal electronics, while the electronics assembly—the circuit board design—must allow for the physical style and functionality of the package design.

Integrating mechanical and electronic design is, therefore, crucial. Design tools that allow for the bi-directional flow of design data between the ECAD and MCAD environments are becoming a requirement for successful collaborative product development. In the ECAD environment, this translates to the ability to import and seamlessly integrate 3D component data from the MCAD system, then pass a full and accurate 3D representation of the board assembly back to the MCAD system.

By being able to provide comprehensive board data to the mechanical designers earlier in the product development process, design flow is enhanced and the need for a prototype board assembly during mechanical design stage is reduced. Manufacturers must assure that their ECAD system supports 3D modeling at the component level and the ability to export accurate 3D design data in order to enable the necessary interaction between the mechanical and electrical environments to enable collaborative MCAD-ECAD co-design.

Mechatronics: Integrating the silos of design

Taking that integration one step further is mechatronics design. By definition, mechatronics is multidisciplinary engineering system design that integrates the various disciplines—mechanical, electrical, computer, control, and systems design engineering. Integrating the design of a product’s mechanical, electronic, and electrical components during the earliest stages of design and throughout the design cycle is becoming crucial to manufacturers under increasing pressures to design and produce innovative products on time and within budget limits.

To streamline development using the mechatronics approach, design teams in each discipline must work in parallel and collaborate continuously on design, prototyping and deployment. Manufacturers must adapt concurrent design and systems engineering processes that enable real-time sharing of design data between electrical, mechanical and control systems engineering.

Many manufacturers are now using simulation software to detect and eliminate integration issues, enabling them to optimize full system performance virtually.  These tools simulate the interaction between mechanical and electrical subsystems throughout the design process.