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24 The PCB Design Magazine • July 2014 and the CAD library would be required in order to realistically share and reuse design data. The Foundation: The EDA Environment As the practice of maintaining design centers in different regions of the world has proliferat- ed, the need to manage EDA tools globally and the opportunity for global multi-site concurrent design present themselves. If you are responsi- ble for the configuration and management of an EDA environment, you already know this is a critical role. It's more than just an assemblage of tool executables. The underlying configuration files and the associated CAD library influence all system operations. The spiral of complexity rapidly increases when the installation spans multiple sites in the same region and becomes even more complex when the installation spans design centers around the globe. Proper configu - ration and management of a global EDA envi- ronment and CAD library is a prerequisite for global, multi-site concurrent design. global Multi-Site Product Development Requirements A company that has a need to support multi-site concurrent design will require an un- derlying engineering data management (EDM) system that can dynamically manage the envi- ronment, the CAD library, and the design data per the following requirements: 1. Environment Management • All design sites utilize a common, cen- trally managed, continually synchronized enterprise-level EDA environment. Minor site- specific variations are acceptable, as long as the variations do not compromise the funda- mental requirement to seamlessly share design data. • All environment data is under strict revi- sion control with write access allocated only to those with responsibility for maintaining the environment. • Environment data is updated as required, tested in a sandbox environment, approved for release, and then synchronized to each site's production environment. • Only environment data customized to support the corporate requirements is managed at the enterprise level. All other environment data is accessed from the local install. The end result: you are only managing and replicating the minimum set of customized data to sup- port your corporate requirements. You move from managing hundreds of environment files, to managing files that now potentially number only in the tens. 2. Library Management • All design sites utilize a common, cen- trally managed, continually synchronized CAD library. feature MULTI-SITE CONCURRENT DESIgN: TIPS AND BEST PRACTICES continues Figure 1: The evolution of concurrent design.