Nearly all products today—ranging from cars to toys to medical devices—contain some type of on-board electronics. The integration of electronic components in products complicates the design process because it requires the unification of what has traditionally been viewed as two diverse disciplines: electrical and mechanical engineering.
Electronics are increasingly being incorporated into products as manufacturers attempt to stay ahead of the rising tide of consumers who demand “smarter” products. In order to design complex electronics faster and better than ever, manufacturers must unify their design processes so the flow of design data across the electro-mechanical divide is smooth and efficient.
Engineers must also consider ways to improve the preparation and validation of designs before sending them to manufacturing to prevent downstream bottlenecks when these complex products are being fabricated. Problems that arise at this final stage are not only the most costly to fix but can delay product delivery schedules.
Mentor Graphics introduces tool to assure “right-the-first-time” designs
Mentor Graphics Corp. yesterday announced the release of a new tool to help automate the process of electronic design. The new tool, Valor, is new product introduction (NPI) software designed to enable the integrated, automated flow for the design, fabrication and assembly of printed circuit boards (PCBs).
Valor was designed to help the design- and product-level NPI engineer prepare and validate product models according to the manufacturer’s rule-set in the engineer’s native design tool. What this does is help ensure a perfect design for production, without requiring specialist manufacturing expertise.
Using the tool, the process-level NPI engineer can evaluate and create process toolkits with no manual entry, so the manufacturer can have a “right-the-first-time” design to eliminate production errors.
The company’s goal in creating Valor was to close the gap between the designer and manufacturer. Now, the manufacturer can create and adjust the rules to meet manufacturing requirements that the designer can follow for a truly bi-directional, consistent, one-rule flow. The tool benefits NPI product and process engineers by reducing design re-spins, improving overall product quality and shortening product delivery schedules.
Features and benefits for lean NPI flow
The features and benefits of Valor include:
• Release by designers of a single-file ODB++ (v8) product model that requires no manipulation by manufacturers enhances product control and quality assurance across dispersed prototype and volume manufacturing supply chains.
• Inclusion of “virtual documentation” in the product-model coming from the product-NPI phase of the lean NPI flow eliminates the need for manual entry of product data at the process-NPI stage from drawings and “side-files.” This saves time, reduces cost, accelerates the NPI process and reduces the risk of human error in the NPI process.
• Full DFM validation of a product-design at the design-level, based on manufacturing process-constraints received from the manufacturers. This minimizes manufacturing-driven design revision-spins and delays in NPI.
The lean NPI flow from Mentor Graphics is now available and is comprised of the Mentor Xpedition platform, the Valor NPI and Valor Process Preparation products, and the Valor Parts Library. The lean NPI flow also optimally supports Frontline PCB fabrication tools and several ODB++-compatible, third-party tools.
The Valor solution is uniquely configured to support each customer’s specific requirements so contacting a Mentor Graphics representative is the best way to get started. To learn more about this release, check out the Mentor Graphics website.
