Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1114420
32 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2019 mented in the design EDA tool, and translat- ed through the software into a package where I would think, "This is going to be a piece of cake. What am I going to do with all the mon- ey I'm going to make?" You might also assume that the little guys come across with data out of CAD tools like Eagle and KiCad where a consistent database is a thing of dreams, and it's a bunch of dis- connected data that may or may not have any sanity to it. But you would be sadly mistaken. Across the board, manufacturers rarely receive a data package where manufacturing rules have been considered, adhered to, or worked around, and where the data has been present- ed in a way that shows that. The instructions are almost never clear and the board can't al- ways be built. Now, I won't put all of the blame on the de- signer or engineer. If you look at companies like Apple or Samsung, they expect most of the products they design to go into volume pro- duction very quickly. Regardless of their size, companies that expect a product to go in vol- ume production clearly consider design rules and manufacturing issues during the design process. They "design for manufacturing," as opposed to "design with manufacturing." But everybody else typically has a designer or an engineer in front of a computer screen. And it's not that they don't want to know more about manufacturing. It's not that they want to choose components that are hard or impos- sible to get or will be impossible to reflow be- cause of their mass. They're not doing that on purpose, but part of it is that they're busy. They have a job to do, and that job is to create the electronic design and capture it in a CAD tool as quickly as possible and get that proto- type to a manufacturer to build so that it can be validated back in the labs. The engineers are never going to have time to understand the nuances of why a tall elec- trolytic capacitor next to an 0603 is going to have a shadow effect when it gets reflowed. For decades, manufacturers have beat on cus- tomers, I've been one of them, saying, "Please involve me earlier. I can consult with you, ex- plain what things are important, and look at the designs as you do them." Then, commercial reality comes in. At some point, a quote is given, and generally, cus- tomers don't want to involve a manufactur- er early for commercial reasons because that would mean they'd be locked in. The only way we're going to have to solve that is with smart software that aims more at designing with manufacturing in mind so that the tools evolve in a way that is far beyond where they are today. Shaughnessy: We've heard that before about how software needs to evolve, and some peo- ple see a role for AI. Do you think AI will be a part of this evolution? Arcuri: Absolutely. And I'll say one more thing while I'm standing on my soapbox. I think DFM is the stupidest thing ever. I know, I've just said heresy (laughs). The layout is com- pleted by a designer and the CAD tools. Then, the data is sent to a fabricator, and while the design is being cast in concrete, fiberglass, or resin, the data is sent to an assembly shop so that they can do DFM. Craig Arcuri