PCB Data Management and Your Design Process

Your organization will need to gather data from multiple sources to create new designs. In addition to schematic symbols and PCB footprints, designers need sourcing data for components to ensure they can eliminate supply chain risk. With a complete set of design and management tools, design teams can get to market on time and remain within budget while ensuring their designs are manufacturable at scale. Altium Designer offers all the tools you need for design and data management, as well as a suite of features for full-scale manufacturing. You can reduce your supply chain risk and work efficiently with the PCB data management features in Altium Designer.

ALTIUM DESIGNER

A unified PCB design package with a full set of design data management features and the industry’s best PCB design tools in a single program.

Is your organization prepared to scale its operations, project complexity, and data architecture? Market demands and the capabilities of new design tools have driven a paradigm shift in PCB data management, forcing design teams to rethink how their design processes for the future. With the right set of design and management features, you can create an efficient data management process that helps your design teams remain highly productive and create the best new technology.

Altium Design is the only PCB design platform that offers everything you need for design, data management, and manufacturing in a single program, allowing your team and operations to scale and remain productive. When you use Altium Designer, you can keep up with advances in new technology thanks to a complete printed circuit design toolset, and you can build a design process to keep your organization productive and competitive.

PCB Data Management and the Great Paradigm Shift

Modern PCB design could be best described as pipelining, where data is fed into the design process at the front end, rather than waiting until layout engineers are ready to create a PCB layout. At one time, because electronic systems were not as complex as they are today, components were much simpler. They consisted of a schematic symbol, a footprint, and a few basic parameters. A common practice was to simply copy a component, and go on using that exact same library part throughout the design, changing the value as needed for each instance. Over time, more complex components were needed with much more information and details attached to support the cutting-edge systems.

Components are the foundation of a new circuit board, but a PCB data management process needs to account for all aspects of your design data. This includes tracking revisions on new designs, manufacturing documentation, component libraries, schematic sheets, and PCB layouts. To ensure design teams can get to market quickly while staying within budget, they need to ensure their design data remains organized and accurate.

Stay Organized with Integrated PCB Design Software

When your design tools are accessible alongside your data management features, you can create the data-driven workflow that today’s PCB design teams require. You can also reduce your risk by auditing data earlier in the design process, allowing you to catch footprint errors, out-of-stock components, and obsolete features in reused designs. Only the integrated design tools in Altium Designer offer these capabilities and all within a single PCB design application.

• Data management and project management for printed circuit design go hand-in-hand.

  Learn more about some professional project management tools to aid data management.

• Large enterprises have implemented a number of processes and strategies for managing circuit board design data. These practices can be replicated by individual PCB designers and small organizations to help them stay productive.

  See how circuit board industry leaders are managing their design and component data.

• Design libraries form the cornerstone of a PCB data management strategy. These libraries will be repeatedly used in new projects, and they need to be organized with complete information to be most useful.

  Learn more about creating design libraries for your organization.

Your circuit board design software will need to access your component libraries when starting a new project.

Early Part Sourcing Prevents Redesigns

Major component supply shortages have hit the electronics industry in recent years, with shortages of discrete devices and passives being especially problematic. Lead times for some out-of-stock components have been increasing to what can only be described as crisis levels. In particular, multi-layer ceramic chip (MLCC) and tantalum capacitors have been understocked, with some part lead times extending well beyond 32 weeks.

So why should this be a concern for PCB data management tasks? In the past, procuring parts for a new design was straightforward, but shortages force designers to look at the supply chain before they design new products, rather than risking a redesign. Since the backbone of a PCB design starts with schematic symbols and PCB footprint libraries, PCB designers need supply chain information when they start planning their designs, rather than waiting until a design is finished.

Essential Tools for Component Sourcing

The best tools for component sourcing will aggregate data across multiple distributors, allowing you to compare stocks, prices, lead times, and minimum order quantities (MOQs). Even better is when these features are accessible within your circuit design software, which allows PCB designers to source components early in the design process. Altium Designer provides these sourcing and component management features alongside the industry’s best design features, giving every circuit board designer the ability to reduce their supply chain risk.

• If you’ve worked with an internal database for tracking components, you can use the database linking features in Altium Designer alongside the built-in supply chain tools for component data management.

  Learn more about component management in Altium Designer.

• Looking into the supply chain helps you spot obsolete components and identify lead times. Most importantly, it lets you compare prices and balance these prices against lead times for components.

  See how supply chain visibility helps you stay within budget.

• Altium Designer lets you take full control over your component library structure. You can import existing data, create new component models, and access sourcing information for all your components in Altium Designer.

  Learn more about efficient component library structures for PCB data management.

Sourcing tools in your PCB design software eliminate the need to create component models and find footprints.

PCB Data Management is Easy When You Use Altium Designer

The complete set of component management tools and PCB design features are built on a rules-driven design engine, allowing you to check your design against important standards and DFM requirements as you create your PCB. Your PCB design process becomes easy with this complete set of data management tools at your fingertips. In addition, you’ll have a complete set of manufacturing tools to prepare documentation for your circuit board.

Make Your Design and Management Processes Seamless with Altium Designer

Altium Designer gives you much more than a set of design and component data management features. PCB designers need a complete toolset to prepare production-grade boards for printed circuit assembly. Everything you need to design, simulate, and fabricate a high-quality circuit board can be found in Altium Designer.

In addition to design tools, Altium Designer includes utilities for exporting standard manufacturing documentation in a variety of file formats. These features let you create the fabrication files your PCB manufacturer and assembler need to move your board into production. Bills of materials, assembly drawings with notes, pick and place files, test point reports, IPC-D356 netlists, and much more can be quickly created with Altium Designer.

• All the design tools in Altium Designer are available alongside a complete set of PCB data management tools. You’ll have a complete set of features for PCB design and data management when you use Altium Designer.

  Learn more about the integrated PCB design environment in Altium Designer.

• Altium Designer recently introduced the Manufacturer Part Search panel to help you find the component data you need for new designs. You won’t have to create all your footprints and manually enter sourcing information.

  Learn more about the Manufacturer Part Search panel in Altium Designer.

• The PCB data management features in Altium Designer integrate with a complete set of sharing and collaboration features in Altium 365. Everyone in your organization can access project data and create a collaborative PCB design process with Altium Designer and Altium 365.

  Learn more about sharing and collaboration with Altium Designer and Altium 365.

Altium Designer creates a unified environment for PCB data management and design.

No matter the size or complexity of your new design, you can use the PCB data management tools to stay productive. You’ll have all the component sourcing features and manufacturing documentation tools you need to create your designs and turn them into real products.

Altium Designer on Altium 365 delivers an unprecedented amount of integration to the electronics industry until now relegated to the world of software development, allowing designers to work from home and reach unprecedented levels of efficiency.

We have only scratched the surface of what is possible to do with Altium Designer on Altium 365. You can check the product page for a more in-depth feature description or one of the On-Demand Webinars.