So again choosing wisely may not be that simple, especially if you have to partner with companies that use these tools heavily (e.g. However recently Cadence acquired AWR from National Instruments and Cadence is becoming the leader in the RF design arena.Ĭadence and Mentor have had a strong tie into the large BGA devices such as Intel and AMD for CPUs, and Xilinx and Altera for FPGAs especially when it comes to interfacing to other memory BGAs or a very large number of BGAs that are typical of very high end designs. I have noticed that for small to medium companies that Altium is becoming (or has become) the leader in the ECAD arena, especially since SolidWorks is the leader in the CAD arena. So find out the entire scope of all your company project needs for the next decade and choose the tools the best meet your needs OR just choose the tools that are able to bridge the technical gaps whatever direction you may go. So there really isn't one-tool-works-for-everything unless your designs are restricted to specific electrical technologies, specific industries, specific standards, and CAM requirements that your 'one tool' meets all of them NOW and in the FUTURE because change is coming and inevitable - just look how many tools have come and gone over 30 years ! This not done automatically and nor is it real time ! However your must ask yourself how many times to need to import / export files ? If your answer is just a couple of times, then this will also meet your project objectives better since the ECAD tool is designed for your project requirement needs. The problem becomes now : 'how do I successfully interface to these tools ?' Well your solution may be right in front of you with a module in SolidWorks called CircuitWorks.ĬircuitWorks is a universal batch-mode module that allows importing and exporting various CAD file formats in and out of SolidWorks to your ECAD tool. In this case a tool such as AWR, Ansys Maxwell, or another tool may be your best solution. You will find that Altium falls short and therefore you will have major problems. In choosing the best solution in any situation, one must ask 'what are you trying to accomplish or do ?' For example: if you need to create a biscuit board embedded CPU and you know that you will be designing with large BGA parts and that all of the design requirements and high speed simulation tools are available from your PCB tool (in this case Altium) then your requirements are met and therefore the solution is good.īut let's say that you need to design a 40 GHz Radio Frequency board for 5G and that there are going to be many RF simulations (not digital) required to complete the design successfully. From my experience, what Jason said is true that SolidWorks PCB is the best real-time interactive MCAD to ECAD solution, especially for those who are already using Altium for PCB layout and obviously for those who are already using SolidWorks for MCAD.
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