If there is a lack of effective communication between PCB designers in the project, several different versions of PCB design data may be generated, and numerous repetitive designs among team members may also occur. If different versions of design data can’t share a unified standard and format, it will inevitably cause communication barriers and management difficulties among members. Repetition of design and labor will definitely lower the efficiency of the whole team. If these problems can’t be predicted and avoided in advance, it will take more time and energy to solve the problems when conflicts arise in the late design stage. In this way, the operation of the whole team not only affects the efficiency, but also probably affects the research and development cycle and budget of the project.
At this time, the question before us is: how to save the successful design results and reuse them for future designs or other team members, so as to avoid repeated designs? How to skillfully design multiple circuits with the same circuit structure? How can each member of the team collaborate fully and have the same standards and templates to manage data? How to make team managers fully understand and control the overall situation?
Design snippets (snippets)
As a diligent electronic engineer, you must have designed many circuits in your PCB design career. There must be a lot of successful PCB design modules that have been verified. These successful designs are likely to be used again in other similar products or projects in the same series. Including its schematic diagram and PCB. Is there a simple way to save these design parts and reuse them easily in other designs, instead of doing the same work over and over again? Or other colleagues in the same team need to use this part of the design, and instead of designing from scratch, copy and paste your saved design results directly?
Altium Designer provides such a function, Snnipet. Save the design fragments in a folder, and then copy the ready-made schematic design and PCB design fragments into your own project as easily as copying fragments. The advantage of this method is that you can easily copy the ready-made design, and you can also adjust and change the copied design fragments to suit yourself. For example, make some changes to some wiring, replace some components and so on.
The reuse of design fragments is the unique advantage of Altium Designer, a unified design platform. If in a design environment with multiple switching of design software, the simple fragment copy method is not feasible because the design data follow different structures.
Type schematic diagram of device (Device sheet)
In terms of module reuse, is there a way to use the circuit diagram I often use as a whole and call it around like a component? It can also be called by different designers in different projects?
Don’t worry, Altium Designer’s device schematic diagram Device Sheet is for this! The software comes with a lot of mature design modules, and the schematic diagrams of these design modules are all made into Device Sheet for you to call at will like a component. As shown in the figure below. This schematic diagram FLASH_S29GL256N11FFIV10_16Mx16 (shown in the upper right corner) has been made into a Device Sheet (green block diagram in the upper right corner, the circular mark indicates reusability). Then, this device schematic diagram is called by several projects like using components (put it in the previous schematic diagram, and the sub-schematic diagram of this Device Sheet will appear after compilation). Two different design projects that call this Device Sheet are NB2DSK.PRJPCB and DaughterBoard.PRJPCB In this way, it is very simple for different members of a team to reuse the same schematic module. Just save it as a Device Sheet and call it at will.
For the device schematic diagram, apart from the rich and diverse Device Sheet provided by the software itself, engineers themselves can also make their own proud works or design modules that may be reused in the future into device schematic diagrams. Save it in your designated location, so that you can call it yourself, or share it with others in need. Give roses to people, keep lingering fragrance.
Multichannel design method (Multichannel)
In design, it is often necessary to reuse the same schematic diagram in different positions. For example, high-pressure common rail electronic control fuel injection system or electronic control injector in the shipbuilding industry, etc., it is necessary to adopt the same driving circuit (identical circuit structure and components) for the six-way fuel injection system to keep the driving consistency. Or a centralized control unit, the control circuits of multiple control terminals are exactly the same. In this case, we don’t need to copy and paste the same duplicate schematic diagram for each channel. Because such copying and pasting is clear in the schematic diagram, it is a mess at the PCB layout stage, and it is impossible to guarantee that each channel has the same layout structure and wiring situation. These slight differences will also affect the execution effect or timing problems. As shown in the figure below, 16 identical circuits are imported into PCB, and the components are completely disrupted. How can I find them one by one and put them in the proper place? Too much trouble!
Therefore, this multi-channel design (reusing the same schematic diagram) must ensure that the schematic diagram is clear and legible, and the layout and wiring on the PCB are completely consistent. Let’s see how Alitum Designer applies multi-channel design to simplify the workload of engineers.
For example, the schematic diagram on the left of the following figure needs to be reused five times, that is, five channels. Then first, the top-level block diagram of these five channels is generated, and five layers of superposition are repeated.
Import data from schematic diagram to PCB. Will generate 5 rooms, and frame the circuits of 5 schematic diagrams in 5 different rooms. As shown in the figure below. Route one of the channels. As shown in the figure below, the fan-shaped Room on the right and top has been laid out.
Then use the function of Copy Room Format to turn the five rooms into the same layout and fan-shaped structure. Then, the layout and wiring of these five channels are spliced together according to circular polar coordinates to form a circle. As shown in the figure below. This method ensures great convenience in the PCB layout and wiring stage, and will not make mistakes.
All kinds of design Templates keep standard uniformity (template).
Schematic diagram template
If the circuit diagram of a PCB design project is complex and large, all designs are usually not stacked on the same schematic diagram. The social circuit is divided into several sub-circuit modules, and each sub-circuit module will be marked with the corresponding title bar, general function and so on. Generally speaking, a complete and beautiful design, when others read your electrocautery diagram, can know the overall basic situation of its circuit from the title bar of your diagram and the connection structure of related modules at a glance. Therefore, the title bar and author information on each schematic diagram, especially when different designers design a drawing, must have a unified standard for the title bar and related explanatory information, so that different styles will not cause confusion. Then the design and application of schematic diagram template is especially necessary for such large-scale projects, especially in the case of teamwork.
Because it is a research institute of a military industrial unit, the title bar contains information of special requirements such as name, materials, confidentiality level, etc. in addition to common information, as well as hierarchical approval and filing procedures such as design, proofreading, auditing, standard inspection, validation, etc. Finally, in order to unify the design, the same title bar is designed for different paper sizes to facilitate the management and filing of design data.
2. PCB design template
In the aspect of PCB design, if there are several boards of the same series, the size, interface layout and installation positioning holes have been determined to be unchanged, it is necessary to make them into PCB templates. Every time a new design is made in the future, the schematic diagram will be directly imported into this PCB design template, saving a lot of shape design, peripheral layout design, and installation and positioning part design. Apply energy directly to the design change itself. Greatly save unnecessary repetitive work, and no mistakes will be made.
3. BOM template
Informatization construction has become the only way for modern enterprises to rapidly improve their core competitiveness and achieve leap-forward development. Today, enterprises no longer pursue single-point and partial application informatization, but pay more and more attention to the overall informatization of application integration, process optimization and information sharing.
In an enterprise, BOM (Bill of Materials) runs through the whole ecological process, such as product conceptual design, detailed design, process planning, prototype trial production, processing and manufacturing, sales and maintenance, and even product extinction. With the advancement of enterprise information construction, BOM has become the core of enterprise product data management, and it is the foundation and bridge of data integration among application information systems. BOM management has become the main content of enterprise engineering informatization and management informatization.
In life cycle management, BOM runs through the whole life cycle. From BOM provision, BOM management, to BOM use, it is inseparable. In Altium Designer, BOM also runs through the whole process from conceptual design of electronic products to final manufacturing, sales and maintenance.
Altium Designer provides circuit design BOM, and can import structural step parts, which can be changed and managed during design. After the design is completed, when electronic products are processed and manufactured, components are purchased and products are assembled, there are process BOM, purchase BOM, manufacturing and assembly BOM information respectively. Play an important role in the whole product life cycle.
Therefore, the template for BOM is also very rich.
Altium Designer’s BOM template data source can collect all-round information, and there are n types of output templates (used for purchasing, manufacturing, assembly, auditing, etc.). The file formats are also rich and varied.
And for each BOM template file, which column information and contents need to be captured can be configured and changed by itself. You can find the source BOM Template file (in the template folder of the installation directory) and configure the captured data column. Finally, output the BOM information for different purposes that you need in mind.