The Importance of Design Data Management

摘要

Challenges in the design of electronic products are caused not only by strict design and electrical requirements, but also by business and market requirements. Shrinking lifecycles and time-to-market concerns are nothing new, but as electronic designs continue to become more complex, the constant drive for competitiveness increases the need for higher quality, higher functionality and cheaper products. In the past, conventional wisdom told us that improved design tools would handle the challenge and increasing complexity of tough designs. But even though many of today's PCB design and engineering tools have much greater functionality than their forerunners, time-to-market has yet to be significantly reduced. No matter how powerful the tools are, designers and engineers still spend much of the design period at task-gathering and interpreting information, rather than using that information for a specific task. In addition, many companies are scaling down, leaving fewer resources, design team members and support staffs available.