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Who wouldn’t love to design new electronics from an island beach?
The idea of remote teams used to be anathema to tech giants that were committed to office life. How do teams collaborate? How can you possibly motivate and supervise people on your team? How do you manage projects, data, access to tools, and communicate with team members on-the-fly?
With new cloud-based technologies coming online every day, more and more businesses are allowing team members to work from afar. Some businesses are creating entirely remote teams in an effort to attract younger workers and broaden their talent base. Other companies are even transitioning all their business operations to a remote model.
Radical Change in PCB Design
With such change occurring in software-driven industries worldwide, one should pose the question: will the PCB design industry be able to keep pace with this level of change? Printed circuit design and manufacturing represent something of a paradox in high tech industries. While PCBs are responsible for facilitating many of the technological advances that make modern life possible, many PCB design tools have lagged behind software in other verticals that emphasize collaboration, open-source sharing, and access from anywhere on any device. PCB manufacturing has generally lagged behind all other industries in terms of automation and transformational innovation, and it is only now catching up to the rest of Industry 4.0.
The number of employees working remotely increased by 115% since 2005. 37% of U.S. workers were telecommuting at least part time in 2015, and these numbers have only risen over the last 4 years. Information technology was by far the industry with the greatest number of remote jobs in a recent survey. However, electronics design and the PCB design industry were not even a blip on the radar. This goes to show how such an important high tech industry has continued to lag other software-driven verticals, primarily due to the lack of collaborative tools.
Collaboration with Online PCB Design Software
Now cloud-based design platforms for PCB design will need to emphasize a number of important design, collaboration, and version control features in order for remote design teams to work successfully and create the best new electronics. Hardware startups and larger enterprises can greatly benefit from these design capabilities as it allows them to expand their talent base, provide designers with greater work-life balance, and reduce overhead.
First, design teams and entire organizations can benefit from a design platform that combines GitHub-esque sharing and forking features with a collaborative interface that mimics the capabilities of Google Docs. Bringing these capabilities into an optional desktop application allows users to tailor their experience and access online design tools alongside other desktop design applications.
With online PCB design software, you won’t have to work on a chalkboard
Just as Google Docs and GitHub allow users to download their data to a personal device, an online PCB design platform should provide the same capabilities. This allows any designer to take their data and bring it into their favorite desktop-based PCB design application. This also allows data to be shared with other members of an organization that may not be part of the design team. You’ll also need these files as deliverables for your manufacturer once you plan on producing your design.
Staying Synchronized During Online PCB Design
Currently, the online PCB design platforms you’ll find with a search engine query contain only a subset of the features required to take a design to production. This forces you to use multiple tools rather than working in a single interface. Instead, a great online PCB design platform will let you take a design completely through to completion and help generate your manufacturer deliverables.
Your schematic editor needs to integrate directly with your PCB layout editor using a schematic capture tool. You should also be able to designate netlists in your editor, as this helps you trace out connections as schematics and layouts become more advanced. This also helps you track which components appear in a given signal net, or vice versa. All of this should happen directly in the cloud as this allows instant collaboration on a single design; you shouldn’t need a desktop application to act as an intermediary.
Your layout and schematic need to stay in sync, meaning changes in one document should be reflected in the other document. Changes can include component replacement, switching connections between components, defining new nets, or any other change you can think of. Keeping schematic and PCB editing on the cloud in a single platform ensures that the two documents can be quickly synchronized and checked as you design. This also allows your routing and layout choices to be checked against your design rules before you finalize and release your project.
Online PCB design in 3D with Upverter
With online collaborative tools becoming more important as more workers go remote, PCB design software will inevitably catch up to this trend. Online design tools are now on the market that allow designers to undertake a number of important design tasks from anywhere. However, a complete browser-based design interface that allows users to take a design straight from an idea to a manufacturable layout has been lacking until only recently.
Now your design teams can have access to remote tools that emphasize collaboration, version control, and universal access when you use the right online PCB design software. If you’re a founder at a startup or you work for an established organization, the browser-based PCB design platform from Upverter provides all the tools you need to design new electronics. Upverter® continuously updates the platform with new features and capabilities that are demanded by the community.
You can sign up for free and get access to the best browser-based PCB editor, schematic editor, and component database. Visit Upverter today to learn more.
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