Ansys announces new partnerships and deeper electronics capabilities.
Ansys and Altium recently announced a “digital bridge” between Ansys and Altium Designer. Just like the other big simulation companies, Ansys has a lot of electronics simulation products for its customers, but the Ansys Electronics Desktop does a good job of providing a jumping-off point for several different design functions.
Ansys and Altium have been working together on printed circuit board (PCB) design and simulation for a long time, and a 2020 webinar titled “Solving PCB Signal Integrity Issues with Altium Designer and Ansys SIwave” outlined the original process of using the two software tools together. Because the two products were already compatible, this announcement brings more of Altium’s electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) tools into the Ansys Electronics Desktop and streamlines the connection.
The goals of the integration are standard simulation-wise: finding issues with signal integrity early in the process before manufacturing kickoff, moving more prototyping to the virtual realm, and pushing these simulations to do more complex calculations.
With the need for everything to be smart and connected, electrification is one of the big pushes in engineering and simulation right now. Electronics simulation engineers are being tasked with finding designs that can perform more efficiently in smaller footprints. Simulation companies big and small are focusing on electronics simulation tools, and the wide array of electronic needs is creating a huge catalog of products. This partnership boost between Ansys and Altium should give engineers using their tools this bump in productivity.
ECAD and Simulation as a Single Workflow
Streamlining the connection between Ansys and Altium follows a pattern of what we’ve seen in the last few years. Companies are taking current products and offerings, giving them a marketing makeover and adding communications tools. This isn’t a reinvention of how simulation engineers will do their jobs, but rather a restructuring and simplification of how the work can be done.
Pulling all of the communication and documentation in one place is smart, and when a company buys into this method, there will be benefits in efficiency and quality. Manually tracking changes through a spreadsheet or series of meeting minutes can get messy and provide multiple possibilities for errors. Communication between all stakeholders is also important, and being able to share ideas with the people who are two to three steps downstream in your company always helps to limit the number of errors and surprises in a project. This is an extension of one of the big goals of simulation—moving the decisions earlier in the design and development process to find issues before physical prototypes are built. This new system will bring change tracking, communication notices and approval processes all into the same place.
More Ansys Announcements in the Electronics Design Realm
In addition to the Altium announcement, Ansys and Flexium recently announced a renewed commitment to the former using Ansys electrical simulation tools for electromagnetic, thermal and mechanical projects. The Taiwanese manufacturer of flexible printed circuits is fully onboard with the electrification of engineering, working with autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems. Adding flexibility into the already dense cluster of requirements for an antenna means an extra degree of difficulty for designers. Flexium did not call out specific Ansys products but noted that the simulations will help when making changes to materials and board layouts. It also notes that reference libraries built for 5G mmWave technology will help engineers to achieve verification and signoff more easily.
Ansys’ power integrity and signal integrity teams also received nods of approval this month as Intel Foundry Service gave Intel 16 certification to several products. RedHawk-SC, Totem, and PathFinder-SC all are approved as tools for companies using Intel in a manufacturing capacity. Ansys’ announcement wasn’t alone, though, as press releases from Siemens, Cadence, and Synopsys all verified similar partnerships with Intel.
In summary, these moves signify that Ansys sits on the top tier of electronics design simulation and will continue to shape the way that products march toward electrification.
Tying All of This News Together
Twenty years ago, it was easier to think of things as mechanical or electrical. The electrification of everything makes that more difficult today, and mechanical engineers need to at least understand electronics to succeed. The bases might be the same, in that electrical components still need to undergo structural analysis tests, thermal studies and vibration checks. Electronics, however, can require the study of electromigration, wave propagation and signal integrity studies.
Having a wide range of products available for electronics simulation happens for a variety of reasons. Ansys is a huge company that has several customers, and these customers are all working in different areas of product development and manufacturing. The tools that work for a battery manufacturer might not work for a PCB manufacturer. Converging toward one streamlined workflow is a goal, but many companies are still working with designers and simulation engineers on different products compared to manufacturing engineers and service engineers. Acquisitions also play a part, where each new company pulled into the Ansys organization has a set of products that may continue to exist as stand-alone tools. The Ansys Electronics Desktop gives engineers lots of options for what function they want to perform while keeping all the data required in the same realm.
It’s worth noting that this represents a deepening of the partnership that Ansys and Altium already share—rather than a merger for the two companies. Ansys has a recent history of acquiring companies like OnScale, Phoenix Integration, and Real Time Innovations. Each of these acquisitions saw Ansys bringing large proven products under its umbrella. Altium is a pretty large company on its own, with 2022 revenue of $171.8 million, according to zippa.com. This might be too much for Ansys to absorb or there might not be any interest in the companies coming together, but at least for this next round of product development, there will be two distinct entities working cooperatively on a project.
