How to Automate Your Design Review Workflow and Process

The increasing demand for smaller, more capable electronics has been a major driving factor behind the development of more complex, densely packed PCBs. Although EDA software is regularly updated to handle the added complexity of PCB board design, board designers must still review and approve any and all design modifications made by the software. Yet very little has been done to deliver this information efficiently to board designers during the PCB review process, leading to wasted time and errors in the review process.

Hurdles of the Design Review Process

Identifying design differences poses another problem: The EDA software finds and presents board designers with data, then leaves them to decide which changes will be approved and which ones will be dismissed. In larger projects where there may be thousands of different design changes, combined with tight deadlines, there is absolutely no room for user uncertainty.

When authorizing a particular change, a board designer must first determine whether or not that change is actually in accordance with what they have in mind for the overall design scheme. This means they must overcome their uncertainty for each individual design change on the list. That is a substantial waste of time spent evaluating the EDA software instead of reviewing board changes.

Making Design Review Easy

Altium Designer has implemented a simple yet powerful set of built-in comparison tools to make your design review and comparison process easy. Download our free whitepaper about Facilitating Physical and Electrical PCB Design Comparison and learn how to automate your design review process today.