Bending Design Rules Without Breaking Them

Despite decades of calls to design high-quality printed-circuit boards (PCBs) to facilitate manufacturing and test, implementation has remained slow, awkward, inefficient, time-consuming, and expensive. Design engineers follow established design rules and present their creations to their manufacturing counterparts, who are generally unfamiliar with the designers' tools and limitations. This new software embraces both sides of new-product introduction, allowing equal access to all. A manufacturing engineer, for example, confronted with a rules-based design decision that would hinder the production part of the process, could suggest an alternative that might bend the rule - or even violate it - to everyone's benefit. Early users report fewer prototype revisions, a shorter development cycle, and lower costs.

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