Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1101604
32 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2019 tween the ECAD world and PTC, the Windchill software PLM system. Shaughnessy: Who is a typical type of custom- er for XPLM? We would think of automotive, because of all the different types of legacy data. Huxel: I have seen so many companies, even in the automotive industry, that do not have a PLM system. Now, the automotive industry is forcing their Tier 2 customers with PLM sys - tems already in place to identify which part is built in which series of each car. And yes, typically, our customers are across all the do- mains—not just automotive. It is really going across all areas, such as medical and aero- space too. All of these industries are affected by that. Many companies today have a PLM system. I do not want to say that this market is settled, but the high-level companies have at least one PLM system, and most of the large compa - nies are doing electronics today—not only mechanics or electrical or software—which is why the demand becomes more and more. In- tegrating an ECAD system is a little bit more complicated than just a mechanical thing— an enclosure. It is one thing. Like a screw is a screw is a screw, but a PCB consists of far more data. It's not only the native data and what the authoring tool can read and write; it's also the created and generic data for man - ufacturing. Shaughnessy: And even terms are different from country to country or company to com- pany, such as "template." Other countries and companies may have a different term for the same thing. Huxel: Absolutely. With the ECAD world, it uses a totally different language. Shaughnessy: And with PLM, there's this big component shortage with some discretes be- ing almost impossible to find now. You look for them, and they have 50- or 80-week lead times. It seems like this would be a really handy thing. Huxel: Right. Going from the component level, thousands of components are introduced ev- ery day. Some of them have reached the end of life because they're antiquated, obsolete, etc. It depends on the structure and culture of the company where this kind of data is stored. It is very often stored in a PLM system, but there are also other techniques around. Web- based platforms provide this kind of informa- tion too, and it depends on how a company is structured. If this information is tied to the PLM system and synchronized with the ECAD world, it has direct integration into the ECAD tools. Shaughnessy: That sounds like kind of a brave new world if you can integrate the two because they both developed separately for so long. Huxel: Right. MCAD would be way closer to a PLM than ECAD, even today. But the ECAD in- tegrations have been around for more than 25 years. They had been on the market since that time, but the demand from the industry hadn't been really high. In the early days, adopters had been high-end companies; today, we're going down to the standard of 1,000-employee companies and smaller. Because they all have time pressure, they have to follow the time-to- market rules and stuff like that, and they need to identify what happened to specific data and make sure everything is in order to trail back- ward. Shaughnessy: When you're selling, you're sell- ing to the management; you're not selling to the PCB designer or design engineer. You want the boss to see the value in this. Huxel: Exactly. So, the electronics engineer wants to get rid of additional work. Clearly, integration is not cheap, and it is not free. We have to talk to management. Shaughnessy: Great. Thanks for speaking with me, Robert. Huxel: Thank you, Andy. DESIGN007