BDCT – The Board Design Core Team

The Board Design Core Team operates in the framework of the PSI El-Net Initiative. BDCT is responsible for providing a PSI-wide basic ECAD support structure for Printed Circuit Board Designs. Together with an Electronics Design Group at DESY we are maintaining a project driven, continuously growing common components library for the "Mentor Graphics Expedition Enterprise" environment.
Modern electronics has special demands regarding the engineering and development environment!

On one hand, it should enable a quick implementation of simple prototypes, on the other hand, it has to support quite complex designs. Complex designs require higher integration capabilities in the areas of analog simulation, signal integrity and thermal analysis. The frequent use of programmable logic devices and microprocessors requires interactive interfaces between the various design tools for hardware and firmware developments. In addition, the integration of RF components and the integration of electronic units into mechanical CAD programs is increasingly gaining weight.

Nevertheless, a central database of components is of paramount importance to exploit synergies and data integrity.

Mentor Graphics is one of the three leading companies in the field of electronic CAD developments and it offers a range of products fully covering our needs. The use of uniform design tools within several areas and a centrally managed component library very much simplifies the exchange of expertise. Circuit ideas and sub-projects, layouts, software and firmware designs may be made available to others. Therefore the realization of new projects is supported and simplified considerably .

Benefits

  • shorter development processes
  • improved task sharing between specialists
  • reuse of circuits/design ideas
  • increased learning curve by sharing experiences
Further details of our projects are presented in the BDCT-Projects folder
and our skills are listed in BDCT-Skills.