Ensuring the form and fit of multiple boards in an enclosure can challenge the most seasoned professional. Accurate 3D modeling gives you an intuitive way to picture and understand how your design will be manufactured and assembled. The problem gets worse when you start mixing traditional PCB and rigid-flex designs into a single assembly. Without insight into the complete multi-circuit boards assembly build, you have a better chance of finding a needle in a haystack than going to full-scale production on your first try. Let’s take a look at optimizing component and board placement to facilitate enclosure fit.
Altium Designer® lets you define and manage mates between boards to ensure your assembly and enclosure fit. Mates allow you to maintain relative board positioning and functionally create a single object to use in your assembly. The single object can be manipulated in the same way that many MCAD software operate. You can identify and remove mates in the Multiboard Assembly Panel.
It is also incredibly simple to create mates by selecting two points. The first point (glyph) defines a primary axis on the selected plane that will act as the stationary Target item for the mate. The second point defines the secondary axis on the Source item that will move and align with the primary axis. You can then modify the mate's properties to perfect alignment and positioning.
Creating An Object Smart Mate
The object smart mates Properties Panel allows you to define specific spacing and orientation for precise and optimal placement every time. You can see a basic example with STEP models for a nut and bolt. First, the nut and bolt are mated together.
You can modify an existing mate by selecting it in the Multiboard Assembly Panel, then use one of the three mate editing modes in the Properties Panel:
Hotkeys can be used to perform incremental adjustments to all of the settings. You can find all of the hotkeys in the Properties Panel when you have a mate selected. You can hold down the hotkeys to perform a move repeatedly until you let go.
Object Smart Mates Hotkeys
Let’s take a more in-depth look at using the mating system for board alignment. When you select the desired mating points, the second selection will automatically move to the defined first selection. How do you actually achieve this in Altium Designer?
Modify Target Glyph
When working on multi-circuit boards assemblies, it is important to consider optimal placement from the component and board level. The placement of individual components can’t impede the enclosure fit. To resolve this issue, you can create temporary mates while in editing mode for a single board in the multi-board assembly editor. The board in the picture below is in editing mode with the Section View enabled.
Temporary Mates
Object smart mates in the Multi-Board Assembly editor introduces MCAD-like assembly editing supporting single object mate manipulation with precise distance spacing for component and board placement optimization. Keep your eyes peeled for more blogs showing you how to leverage multi-circuit boards assemblies in your product design. You can try it out for yourself with a free trial.