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16 The PCB Design Magazine • March 2015 Until recently, having DFM analysis in- house has been very costly, creating an obsta- cle for many companies to adopt a pre-man- ufacturing DFM process. Previous DFM analy- sis software tools came with a very high price point, ran on expensive hardware, and required dedicated users to run the analysis, making it very difficult for adoption in the majority of the electronics market. The good news is that more mainstream DFM tools are now avail- able in the market and can provide the same in-depth analysis, but instead have a very low cost of ownership to procure and, more impor- tantly, maintain. These tools are also much easier for the everyday design engineer to use and deploy in the PCB layout process, without really hav- ing to be a manufacturing expert. Several of these new offerings allow users to model the rules that their intended manufacturer uses, to ensure that PCBs can be built by a par- ticular manufacturer, and then rule sets can be switched to model different manufactur- ers when the design moves from prototype to production. Because these tools are designed as DFM tools and are free from the constraints of PCB CAD, they can detect problems in a design that are not supported by core PCB CAD tools. Good DFM ensures that a design not only performs electrically as expected, but can be manufactured successfully in high volume quantities without increasing cost or risk, or adding unnecessary time to the design process. PCBDESIGn UnDERSTAnDInG DFM AnD ITS ROLE In PCB LAyOUT continues feature Table 1: A short list of common DFM issues. Rick Almeida is one of the founders of Downstream Technologies.