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February 2014 • The PCB Magazine 29 THE INTERNET OF THINGS DRIvES NEw PCB DESIGN APPROACH continues model. Determining factors for a design application to harness the power of the cloud are tied to obvious benefits such as increased speed and capacity, lower cost, security and so on. If your design application is not perfor- mance-intensive, or the cloud does not lower your development costs or improve productiv- ity, it might not make sense just yet. Other online resources and communities, however, have existed for years helping engi- neers get answers, find common design ele- ments and identify new technologies faster. Element14.com, the first and largest online en- gineering community with more than 200,000 members, enables developers to connect with like-minded peers to gain design inspiration or obtain expert answers and opinions. One of its most active forums is hosted by the CadSoft EAGLE user community. In addition to answers and advice, element14 contains a free database of CAD libraries, which are searchable by com- ponent supplier, thus enhancing designer pro- ductivity and cost to develop. Another trend that continues to evolve in the PCB design industry is tighter forms of in- tegration between electrical and physical de- sign. To efficiently bring a new product into production, electrical CAD (ECAD) and me- chanical CAD (MCAD) data must be merged. A virtual 3D representation of the PCB geom- etry within MCAD tools allows mechanical engineers to quickly design product housings Figure 1: the arduino mega 2560 reference design in cadSoft eaGle.