Multi-board systems development capability scaled up in Mentor’s Xpedition
Xpedition Systems Designer captures the hardware description of multi-board systems, from logical system definition down to the individual PCBs, automating multi-level system design synchronisation processes to ensure team collaboration with accuracy and faster design productivity.
Current systems design processes for advanced electronics are, Mentor asserts, characterised by multiple, disconnected tools used for system definition, with no standard methodology to synchronise and transfer design data between design disciplines and abstraction levels. This can lead to incorrect electrical connections, mechanical interference, and the high costs of manual synchronisation. Mentor presents Xpedition Systems Designer as resolving this problem as the industry’s only single, integrated, and automated methodology that captures complete logic system definitions. The system may consist of multiple boards, cables and other system elements, such as backplane, cable assemblies, sensors and actuators. This solution enables consistency and completeness of the multi-board system description.
“Systems design involves collaboration across disciplines, and is critical to modern product development. Traditional design practices isolate systems capture from the rest of the process, lowering team productivity, stifling innovation, and increasing product cost,” stated John MacKrell, vice president, Systems Engineering Knowledge Council lead of CIMdata.
The Xpedition Systems Designer product replaces time- and resource-consuming manual processes and the redundant re-entry of data with automatic synchronisation of design changes across multiple levels and disciplines. This design “cockpit” enables system-wide partitioning of logical system blocks into individual PCBs. The environment fully supports concurrent design, enabling team members to simultaneously engineer and collaborate on different components of the system.
The software provides a range of capabilities to ensure accurate, concurrent, and reliable systems design connectivity via automated processes. Here is a list of added functionality to optimise systems design efficiency:
– Single cockpit for logical system definition: System-level blocks and intra-board connectivity are defined within a common environment. System architectures created in Visio can by imported to accelerate system capture. Advanced synchronization work-in-progress design data enables multiple engineers to concurrently collaborate on the logical system level, as well as within the lower-level PCB projects.
– Simplified system-wide partitioning: A system can be partitioned into multiple board projects and associated connectivity. Automated connectivity synchronises changes across the system, enabling ‘what-if’ re-partitioning exercises to optimise the system for performance, size and cost.
– Correct-by-design connector management: The effort to add, manipulate and update connectors is simplified with on-the-fly creation of parameterised connectors. Automated connector mating and pin pairing, as well as synchronisation between PCB projects and system design data, eliminates connector errors throughout the design cycle.
– Automated connectivity definition and verification: Definition of connections between system elements including connection order and wiring of multiple nets and wires is highly automated. Signals can be traced across the entire system to ensure that the connectivity is as specified.
Mentor; www.mentor.com/pcb/xpedition/systems-design/
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
