Sign In

ECAD/MCAD PCB Design

Today's designs carry strict mechanical and electrical constraints, and both sets of constraints need to be considered in your PCB design process. Browse our library of resources to learn more about electronic computer aided design (ECAD) and mechanical computer aided design (MCAD) for printed circuit boards.

Defining ECAD & MCAD Integrations CoDesigner and MCAD Component Placement MCAD CoDesigner MCAD Collaboration

29:01 Editing Your PCB Geometry with MCAD Tools You need to define your PCB geometry in the context of your enclosure. If your board cannot physically be assembled Watch Video

26:26 CoDesigner and MCAD Component Placement We design products not just PCBs requiring effective collaboration between MCAD and ECAD engineers. We need to consider how we Watch Video

Creating Unusual Shapes in Altium Designer - The Donut Download PDF

How To Reduce Design Respins With Embedded 3D STEP Models Download PDF

What is Multi-board Design? Learn more about what is multi-board design and how to use native 3D design with ECAD MCAD collaboration aids complex PCB layout. Read Article

Mechanical and Electrical Design Come Together With Altium’s MCAD CoDesigner Electronics designers working in small design houses or in large enterprises often encounter a common set of challenges when interfacing with mechanical designers. For many new products, the mechanical form factor requirements will constrain the electrical design in terms of physical layout, location of interfaces, and component selection. For many electronic products, flex and rigid-flex board designs require careful modeling of the mechanical Read Article

What is the Difference Between ECAD and MCAD? Mark Harris gives us an introduction to the difference between ECAD and MCAD in this article. Use the best PCB design software for ECAD/MCAD integration. Read Article

Get the Most From Your Power Supply Design Software Power supplies can be difficult to design and layout as they require attention to safety and efficiency. Everything from isolation to thermal management needs to be considered in these systems, and designers need to have a complete set of design features to create reliable power supplies. In addition, power supplies tend to have mechanical constraints imposed by the enclosure, and these need to be considered when creating a PCB layout for a power Read Article

Designing for Shock Management in Avionics PCBs Of all the electronics application areas, there is one that needs to carefully consider mechanical and thermal shocks during design: avionics. An avionics system that is put into production within a satellite, aircraft, or spacecraft can experience strong vibration and mechanical shock during flight, and these systems need to be designed with high reliability in mind. IPC standards, MIL-PRF standards, and other standards specify some design Read Article

What is ISO 14300 In looking for the answer of what is ISO 14300, find out about space exploration device requirements and the potential behind CAD tools. ALTIUM DESIGNER PCB Design software with excellent communication through the design process. The International Standards Organization (ISO) represents 163 national standards bodies and functions as an independent, non-governmental entity. ISO meetings bring experts together to share knowledge and to gain Read Article

PCB Library and Supply Chain Integration in Altium Concord Pro Anyone planning to manufacture a new circuit board has plenty of challenges to overcome. From component shortages to outdated design data, project managers and designers face obstacles to timely production that arise from stale component data and supply chain information. Sourcing shouldn’t be guesswork, and it shouldn’t require 3rd party tools that only provide visibility to a portion of the supply chain.Supply chain changes can catch any Read Article

PCB Design Reuse and Product Lifecycle Management in Altium Concord Pro Reusing design data is a great way to hasten redesigns of existing hardware. Managing this design data, including version control and component data management, can be a real challenge. Production lead times are decreasing, component lifecycles are shorter, replacement parts are pushed to market sooner, and design data steadily grows as new designs become more complex.Reusing design data for a portion of an existing board or functional blocks Read Article

Modeling and Placing Connectors Within Altium Designer ALTIUM DESIGNER The most powerful, modern, and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use. I/O use connectors for PCB system integration In this guide to PCB connectors, we’ll take a look at connectors within electrical systems, how they benefit from ECAD/MCAD tools and optimal design specifics like appropriate cable connectors or gold fingers gold plating. Connectors abound on printed circuit assemblies given integrated electrical Read Article

How to Keep Your 3D PCB Models Current with Data Management Tools Any component includes a significant amount of design data. This includes electrical models, 3D component models, and PCB supplier information. Your PCB design software should be allowed to take this data and integrate it with your MCAD tools. This allows you to create 3D body models from your PCB footprints and integrate them into a data library. Ensuring that this data stays up to date takes a data management platform that operates directly Read Article

How PCB Libraries and Data Management Help Prevent Intellectual Property Theft Anytime you send your finished design data out for production at an overseas factory, you place yourself at risk of intellectual property theft. Unscrupulous workers can pilfer design data and sell it to a competitor. They can also pilfer finished boards and reverse engineer them. This theft of intellectual property undermines competitiveness and ultimately places a company’s survival in jeopardy. In addition to the problems surrounding third Read Article

Digital Input Sampling for Embedded Systems in Altium Designer Whether or not you know it, embedded systems play an important role in providing broad functionality in a number of important applications, ranging from consumer electronics to military and aerospace systems. These systems must often gather analog signals and convert them to digital data, followed by using this data in complex calculations. There is plenty of other functionality to include in these systems in order to make them function as Read Article

Design PCBs to Meet FAA Aircraft Certification Standards Avionics and aerospace engineers face a strictly regulated landscape when designing civil aircraft and the electronic systems that support them. You don’t have to be a professional aviation engineer to know that aircraft are extremely complicated mechanical and electrical systems. From withstanding extreme environments to rugged electrical and mechanical requirements, the Federal Aviation Administration defines standards for every aspect of Read Article