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Home Role - Mechanical Engineering

Solutions for Mechanical Engineers

I work closely with electrical engineers because the density of electronics in our products
requires close collaboration between mechanical and electrical enginers.
However, our manual data exchanges are laborious and slow.

MCAD-ECAD Bi-directional Synchronization

MCAD-ECAD Bi-directional Synchronization icon

Enable seamless transfer of design data between ECAD and MCAD environments, including enclosure models, copper geometry, keep-out areas, rigid-flex designs, harness designs, and multi-board assembly. Bi-directional ECAD to MCAD data exchange allows mechanical and electrical engineers to leverage the full capabilities of their respective CAD software, streamlining workflows and reducing errors associated with manual data translation.

Accuracy of Design Data

Accuracy of Design Data icon

Manually transferring files between ECAD and MCAD is error-prone, often leading to unnoticed issues surfacing late in the development cycle. MCAD CoDesigner preserves data accuracy between electrical and mechanical CAD tools, reducing misalignments and errors for collaborative engineering teams.

Elevate and Accelerate Collaboration

Elevated Design Collaboration icon

Describing engineering changes solely through text-based communication can be challenging and prone to misunderstandings. Altium 365 elevates ECAD-MCAD collaboration so your teams can design innovative products faster. Bi-directional design data sharing and streamlined communications reduce lost time, eliminate design delays, and remove bottlenecks caused by manually exporting, sharing, and importing intermediate CAD files between teams.

Core Features of Altium 365

ECAD-MCAD Integration

Turn electronic and mechanical collaboration challenges into a competitive advantage by seamlessly working across domains without loss of intent or time. Bi-directional data transfer between your ECAD and MCAD tools makes it easy to collaborate with your mechanical team and share design revisions as they happen. Native integration with Inventor®, SOLIDWORKS®, and PTC Creo® is up to 10x faster than your typical error-prone data exchange methods.

Engineering Data Management

All your libraries and design data are stored in one secure workspace with granular role-based access controls. Authorized team members can access the data they need, when they need it. Altium 365 engineering data management is based on the Git version control system and optimized for hardware version control. Track changes with full traceability and transparency to understand who made changes to the project, when, and why. Quickly identify design changes with a visual diff designed specifically for hardware. Easily revert to previous versions if needed, and never wonder again whether the “v4_final2” is truly the final version.

Web Viewer

Deliver higher quality products to market faster than your competitors with transparent collaboration. Share the real-time state of projects with team members, manufacturers, and even customers. Stakeholders can review and mark up your designs without sensitive data ever leaving your design space. Anyone with internet access can view, search, cross-probe, and comment on your project from a browser, with no additional ECAD licenses required.

FAQs

How does ECAD-MCAD collaboration benefit mechanical engineers?

ECAD-MCAD collaboration reduces design errors, accelerates workflows, and improves cross-functional visibility. Mechanical engineers gain access to accurate board geometry, component placement, and keepouts in their MCAD tool, enabling early fit validation and better design decisions.  Synchronized design data and comments eliminate back-and-forth emails and version mismatches throughout the electronic product design lifecycle.

How is electronic design data shared between mechanical and electrical engineers?

MCAD CoDesigner integrates with Altium Designer and MCAD tools that include SOLIDWORKS, PTC Creo® Parametric, Autodesk Inventor®, and Autodesk Fusion 360®. MCAD tools gain a new panel that allows mechanical engineers to pull design data into their mechanical CAD application and push any change back to collaborating electrical engineers.