Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1489778
40 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2023 Article by Zachariah Peterson ALTIUM As I look back on 2022, I'm realizing that my company plays multiple roles in client projects beyond just designing circuits and PCBs. Sure, we're primarily a PCB design company, but we also help with things that happen outside the PCB. is includes tasks like enclosure design, defining mechanical constraints, simulating electrical behavior, mating boards into larger assemblies, selecting cabling, and defining test requirements, all of which slowly creep into the standard scope of work for design projects. e same set of tasks have crept into CAD soware features, especially in the PCB design space. Both mechanical design tools and PCB design soware have expanded their capa- bilities beyond enclosure/fixture design and PCB Designers Are Really Product Designers board layout, respectively. Looking at some of the capabilities in a platform like Fusion 360, the MCAD side has significantly outpaced the ECAD side. In the ECAD/EDA world, we still focus mostly on simulation and fit to enclosure, but there is so much more that goes into full-scale product development, and the ECAD soware world should start to move much faster toward the goals I outline below. What PCB Designers Need for Product Development As I mentioned in my earlier I-Connect007 article on simulation, designers need much simpler simulation access either inside their