Streamlining design to accelerate time-to-market

Meeting complex design challenges

Ben Dowding, chief executive officer (CEO) and lead engineer at Taylor Dowding Innovation Limited (TDI), leads an electronic design and software development services consultancy that faces complex design challenges daily. Based in the United Kingdom, TDI specializes in designing the electronic systems inside end products, but the company is often called upon to not only design an electronic system but also manage the sourcing of electronic components and the contracting of printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing.

Founded in 2013, TDI also coordinates with the subcontractors who design and manufacture the enclosures of a client’s end product. In addition, TDI offers services to help systems companies establish their own internal engineering teams, tool flows and methodologies to develop future projects in-house.

“Every engagement is different, but some of the companies we work with don’t have experience in doing any of this,” says Dowding. “As a result, a means for efficient communication and design collaboration is a must have.”

For PCB design, Dowding is a long-time user of Siemens EDA’s PADS™ Professional software. PADS is a part of the Xcelerator portfolio, a comprehensive and integrated portfolio of software and services from Siemens Digital Industries Software. Dowding recently volunteered to be an early adopter of the PADS Professional App Suite — a new cloud-enabled solution in Siemens’ cutting-edge Xcelerator as a Service (XaaS) offering.

The PADS Professional App Suite is the first Siemens EDA technology to bring the digital productivity of a cloud-based, software as a service (SaaS) solution to design teams. PADS Professional App Suite delivers new levels of productivity and collaboration between team members, parts suppliers and contract manufacturers. Siemens expects to add new subscription plan configurations to bring even tighter integration, advanced capabilities and new levels of productivity to its XaaS offering.

Ben Dowding is a founder, CEO, and Lead Engineer at Taylor Dowding Innovation Ltd.

Increased design efficiency

Dowding said that prior to using the PADS Professional App Suite, TDI typically shared files by keeping a repository accessed via a shared link on a mainstream file-hosting service or simply zipping the project up and emailing it.

“This, of course, has its own problems as data sizes and files get ever larger,” says Dowding. “You have to worry about everyone receiving the latest email and that they are working with the most current version of the design data. One email may get hung up on a firewall, and you may have to wait a few days to get a reply, if at all, for a question that may take only 10 minutes to answer. And, of course, we all have to worry about the security of data, which email isn’t that reliable for. All of these traditional routes have their limitations.”

Dowding continues, “With the PADS Professional App Suite everyone is connected and we all know we’re looking at the latest design data. It removes any questioning of the data’s integrity. This certainly is a step up from where we used to be.”

For working with PCB team members, Dowding said that using the PADS Professional App Suite helps his design team reach new levels of collaboration and productivity.

“I work closely with two colleagues,” says Dowding. “One uses our floating license, while another has his own PADS Professional license, and he works more remotely. Rather than putting a design project in a mainstream file-hosting service, or some repository, we have the ability to use the PADS Professional App Suite to design and discuss aspects of a design in a live environment. This provides a more concurrent approach to our design process than we’ve ever had previously. The checking in and checking out of the project is more fluid and much easier to control.”

Dowding says the PADS Professional App Suite offers an “engineer-next-to-you” experience where an area of the board can be flagged and the designer can quiz that component in a web browser.

“You can take a snapshot of that area and say, ‘I’d like to put the tracking in here, but we have this problem with this mounting hole. Can we move this?’” says Dowding. “Being able to detail these aspects of the design allows the engineer to literally get back to you within a very, very short period of time.”

Dowding adds, “This function enables the PCB designer to be more efficient and stay on task, maintain optimum productivity and create positive results.”

Facilitating collaboration with customers and contractors

Dowding finds that using the PADS Professional App Suite also facilitates the sharing of information with customers who might want to review the schematic after design modifications or the bill-of-materials (BOM) following any library amendments. “We work with a company in the space arena developing a video system to be launched into space. To be able to see the 3D representation of that product, literally as it’s being designed, is great for them,” Dowding reports.

In addition, Dowding says that with the PADS Professional App Suite, customers can also access the latest version of the design whenever they want and collaborate with mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) teams for sharing detailed information.

“Often MCAD teams don’t have a PADS Professional license, but the PADS Professional App Suite allows me to share the design with them,” says Dowding. “This gives them much more detailed information about the PCB design so they can concurrently refine their enclosure design. You can post something within the collaboration work-space of the PADS Professional App Suite and the other teams can get that straightaway. They can access it very, very quickly.”

The PADS Professional App Suite empowers engineers with cloud-enabled productivity.

Software reliability and data security

Dowding emphasizes that he contracts with some customers in sensitive sectors where security is a chief concern.

“On behalf of my customers, I need to ensure the integrity of their data and who can access that data,” says Dowding. “With the PADS Professional App Suite, those things have been addressed. The sense of security that you get with the product and the accessibility that you can give, or take away, from your customers or your team members via the remote access control is very good and very flexible. I appreciate that every system has potential flaws, but from what I’ve seen with the PADS Professional App Suite so far, it’s secure, and if I find a problem in the software, it gets addressed quickly.”

Dowding notes that TDI switched to the PADS Professional App Suite after subpar experiences with a competing cloud-based technology.

“I can think of a particular PCB software vendor’s product that I have significant concerns with,” says Dowding. “With this competitor’s product, I had real issues with the time it took to actually achieve end results against aggressive requirements. Their workspace environment is exceptionally slow when it comes to library development and also in terms of updating some of the design files, etc. It’s very limited as far as the design is concerned. When I came across bugs in their software, I expected them to be addressed promptly, which didn’t happen with this vendor.

“I won’t continue to use design software platforms where the vendor does not seem to value me as a customer. It’s a very sore point with me when the CAD vendors don’t support web tools in the way that I feel their customers deserve.”

Although Dowding could have continued to use the competitor’s offering, upon moving to PADS Professional he immediately saw the increased efficiency, productivity and quality the Siemens EDA tool offers.

“Despite the fact that I could sit and complete a layout using that competing product, I don’t want to waste my time doing far less productive work than I could with another, better tool like PADS Professional,” says Dowding. “On top of taking longer to do the layout using my previous tool, the end result still wouldn’t be as good as it is with PADS Professional.”

The PADS Professional App Suite also offers TDI’s partners a more user-friendly experience. Designers can see a design in the cloud workspace, view the BOM and immediately share the vision of that data with the customer.

“The whole experience really is so straight-forward and it’s a comfort to know it’s going to work like it should,” says Dowding. “That’s one of the big positives of the PADS Professional solution: You’re never clicking a button thinking, ‘Is this going to crash this time?’ It’s a competent approach and a very reliable tool.”

Inspiring this level of confidence and outperforming the competition, it’s easy to see why the PADS Professional solution, inclusive of the PADS Professional App Suite, has become Taylor Dowding Innovation’s tool of choice for highly productive, collaborative design with both customers and team members. The combination of increased design efficiency, better design data security and concurrent engineering all within a trusted cloud environment translates to faster time-to-market and more satisfied customers.

Additionally, as part of the Xcelerator SaaS portfolio, the PADS Professional App Suite spreads these benefits throughout the entire design and manufacturing flow, tying together component suppliers, PCB manufacturers and mechanical engineers with a seamless digital thread. Even in a world of increasing design, process and organizational complexity, Taylor Dowding Innovation and its customers can more quickly realize tomorrow’s designs today.