PCB Technical - How to achieve low-cost PCB design and layout?

How to achieve low-cost PCB design and layout?

A major trend of PCB design is to gradually lean towards open source hardware models and control systems. Another major trend is the explosive growth of development boards. PCB design tools are being used in more and more development board designs. This article will tell you how the industry has achieved low-cost PCB design and layout in the past 25 years.

As PCB design is more and more commonly used with existing development boards, and daughter boards are used to drive hydraulic devices and servo motors or perform tasks based on light, motion, and sound, the trend of PCB design gradually tends to open source hardware models and Control System.

Another major trend in PCB design is the explosive growth of development boards. In October 2013, a survey was conducted for PCB designers around the world. The subjects of the survey included professional engineers from 42 different countries.

The survey results show that nearly two-thirds of the respondents (64%) believe that development boards have reduced their demand for custom PCB designs to a certain extent. On the surface, this result threatens the development of PCB design, but the reality is that PCB design tools are being used in more and more development board designs.

Nevertheless, since its inception, PCB design has not undergone fundamental changes. Innovative technologies in the PCB design field have been focused on reducing the cost of development boards and shortening development time, but the PCB layout has always been basically the same, and only the components used and product performance are constantly changing-this is also the root of most design complexity reason.

In the face of fierce competition, shortening the product design cycle is crucial for engineers and managers. One of the most concerned issues of many companies is: How can engineers obtain development tools that can shorten the time to market and reduce design costs, so as to cope with increasingly complex PCB designs. The design cycle has a great decisive effect on the time when the product is put on the market, and the PCB layout is often used to compensate for the delay in the early stage of the design process. In addition, because manufacturers' work locations and design teams are distributed all over the world, it is not difficult to imagine how difficult it is to obtain the best development tools, which makes multiple design teams and product time-to-market challenges.

To meet these challenges, manufacturers urgently need development tools that can utilize existing resources, including manual and computer tools that allow interoperability. These development tools are easy to use, have scalability, and can connect other time-consuming design phases in the design process. The performance of PCB design tools often mentioned by engineers includes:

Some items available in the high-end market of the electronics industry can be used to analyze the designer's actual design, how the chip performs internal work, and how the chip responds to its peripheral products. For engineers, the question is how can they reach this point with the least effort and the least mistakes...without a little luck.

Although there are a large number of commercial products on the market (most of them are expensive and very expensive), only a few products are reasonably priced... They not only integrate powerful functions and provide very low start-up license costs. Features such as product ease of use are becoming more and more important, which can effectively accelerate complex designs while reducing the initial cost of design.

The survey also investigated the factors that engineers prioritized when choosing PCB design software, such as price, functionality, ease of use, service support, etc. The survey results clearly show that most design engineers value functionality rather than price when purchasing design tools, and 60% of survey respondents believe that functionality is an "extremely important" factor. It has been providing users with super-functional products, but it is becoming more and more challenging for each generation of software products to meet the needs of users. What engineers need is a software product that can optimize design time while creating more time for them to innovate and test.