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28 The PCB Magazine • February 2014 Other results were not unexpected: • The majority of designers put functionality before cost when buying design tools, with 60% of respondents rating functionality as an "extremely important" factor • A design tool should offer a gentle learning curve • Design tools should: – Allow multiple designers to lay out a single project without sacrificing productivity – Have a plug-and-play model for tasks that are intensive to increase productivity – Allow designers to collaborate with each other in real-time from anywhere in the world While it is true that more and more design projects are being started with off-the-shelf de- velopment kits and boards instead of designing a PCB from scratch, engineers will often need to design an interface board (such as a shield, cape, expansion, daughter card, etc.). This is a market where many PCB tool companies, in- cluding CadSoft, have significantly benefited. As more and more open source hardware platforms are finding their way into commercial development projects, some large global silicon suppliers are now offering such low-cost open source kits to the maker and hobbyist in hopes of increasing demand for their technologies. TI's Launchpad series is just one example. What about peer-to-peer, social media, de- signing in the cloud and other forms of collabo- ration? Are these trends fuelling designer pro- ductivity? Although somewhere between novel idea and trend, a few considerations need to be ad- dressed before the cloud is deemed mainstream for electronics design. These considerations include risk and compliance (such as data security and retrieval), flexibility (access and control) and timing (different services will benefit from moving to the cloud sooner). From a business standpoint, it is more likely to occur in PCB design first, as there are so many more PCB designers to make it a more sustainable to $431.9 million in the most recent quarter reported, an increase of 18% compared to the same quarter of the prior year. The four-quarter moving average increased 14.4%. The financial opportunity for electronic product development is exponential, but there are major pitfalls as well. A simple rule of thumb in management consulting practices states that, on average, companies lose a third of after-tax profit when they ship products six months late. One could easily argue the penalties are sig- nificantly greater in the consumer electronics market, which has now far exceeded the $200B mark. Design cycle time plays a big part in deter- mining a product launch schedule, and the PCB layout part of this process is often called upon to make up for early design phase schedule slips. In today's competitive climate, finding ways to reduce design cycle times is a priority for all en- gineers. Of chief concern for many companies is that as PCB design becomes more and more complex, engineers need to have cost-effective tools that reduce time-to-market. Another po- tential challenge is the fact that companies have design teams dispersed all over the world. Given all those factors, it's easy to see how completing a product launch within the speci- fied time frame can be daunting. To address all of these challenges, companies need tools that can leverage their existing resources (both hu- man and computer), allow interoperability, have a gentle learning curve and can offer ex- tensions that link other time-intensive parts of the design cycle or supply chain. In a recent industry survey conducted by CadSoft Computer, designers from 42 different countries weighed in on future requirements, as well as emerging trends in electronic product development. Some of the results were surprising: • Sixty-four percent of respondents think development boards are reducing the need for custom PCB design • Almost half (46%) are developing with open source hardware platforms • Eighty-three percent agree peer-to-peer communities are important, while 25% believe they are essential THE INTERNET OF THINGS DRIvES NEw PCB DESIGN APPROACH continues