A Unified CAD-PLM Architecture for Improving Electronics Design Productivity through Automation, Collaboration, and Cloud Computing

In electronics design, Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools manage part data in a logical schematic view (a part symbol) and a physical PCB view (a part footprint). Yet, a part has a third view, which CAD tools ignore its supply data (Manufacturer part number, variant, distributor, etc). To manage this manufacturing view a broad class of tools known as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) have evolved. A substantial chasm exists between the manufacturing and engineering views. More specifically, part data known to the supply chain (managed through PLM tools) and performance and specification data known to the engineering world (managed through CAD tools) must be manually integrated and managed by the design team. This leads to a substantial amount of redundant data entry into both tool chains with any error resulting in an inconsistency between design intent and fabrication. In this work we introduce an entirely new approach to bridging the tool-chain divide a web-based architecture we call FriedParts. FriedParts exploits the recently available database-driven parametric part interfaces of CAD tools (like Cadences Component Information System or Altiums Database Library Components) and web 2.0 automation to crawl data information providers like Octopart, Inc. and Digikey, Inc. and tie this information directly into the CAD tool at design time. It uses heuristics to suggest CAD symbols and footprints. Part search is handled from the website where cloud computing accelerates the search performance. The materials bill output from the CAD tool is then fed back into FriedParts which can automatically find second-source distribution, find alternate manufacturers, optimize purchasing, and perform other PLM functions. The amount of data entry by the designer is brought to almost zero. FriedParts stores the actual CAD data (part libraries) fostering verification and collaboration. In a user case study, the average time to enter Digikey part number P1.0KGCT-ND, a Panasonic 1K-Ohm surface-mount resistor, was 6.1 seconds including all of the round-trip time to the server. Compare this with more than ten minutes to do the identical task using a combination of an Excel-based CIS database and a popular online-based commercial PLM product. Further, the FriedParts solution resulted in zero data-entry errors and perfect user compliance, whereas three errors (inconsistencies) were found between the data entered into Excel and the online PLM. Conceptually, FriedParts is a technology demonstration of the idea that CAD and PLM should share a single parts database to eliminate synchronization effort and errors, should exploit online information sources, and should simplify and automate data-entry tasks. FriedParts is open-source and will also be made available as a free service.