The Digital Bridge Ecosystem with Joao Beck

Altium and Ansys are redefining the way ECAD and Simulation engineers work together. Today, we are joined by Joao Beck, Altium's Director of Enterprise Technical Marketing, to give us all the details. The Altium-Ansys Digital Bridge is a seamless, digital connection between ECAD and Simulation. This is just another step in Altium's quest toward a digital ecosystem. Make sure to watch the entire episode so you can fully understand what's coming your way soon. Explore the digital bridge.

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Show Highlights:

• Intro
• Altium's New Workflow Offering
• MCAD CoDesigner in Simulation?
• A Full Suite of Capabilities
• What the Workflow Looks Like
• What's in the Revision History
• The Report
• Version Control & Rolling Back Simulations?
• Simulation to Altium & Vice Versa
• Mechanical Simulation?
• The Digital Bridge Ecosystem
• Broader Access?
• Who's This For?

Links and Resources:

• Check What’s New in Altium 365®
• Learn more about Altium 365®, Where the world designs electronics
• Learn PCB design for FREE, visit Altium Education website
• Connect with Joao Beck on LinkedIn

Transcript:

Joao Beck:

They have the best PCB design tool and they can have that connected to the best simulation tool. And even if probably they want to connect to the mechanical tool as well, they can decide which mechanical tool they want to connect to. We have that bridge as well.

Zach Peterson:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Altium OnTrack podcast. I'm your host, Zach Peterson. Today we're talking with Joao Beck, Director of Enterprise Technical Marketing here at Altium. We have some great stuff to talk about with a relationship to a new product that Altium had a debuted at DAC this year, Digital Automation Conference, and I think it'll be great to get some more information on on the podcast with Joao. Joao, thanks so much for joining us.

Joao Beck:

Thanks for having me here, Zach.

Zach Peterson:

So I was very excited when I saw a press release and then a product showroom page on the Altium website about a new product that has come out, and it sounds like it's still in the works a little bit, but I think it's very interesting for a lot of folks and it's certainly something that I have been asked about many times. So why don't you go ahead and tell us about this new offering available soon to all TM users?

Joao Beck:

Okay. So as you may know, we recently partnered with Ansys to solve one of the most time-consuming and error-prone tasks in designing a PCB and simulating it, which is how engineers communicate between ECAD and simulation. So this technology that we develop together, it's essentially, it creates a digital bridge between the two platforms, making pass it on data easy, as well as communicating within, without the engineer having to go outside his design platform.

Zach Peterson:

So when you say go outside the design platform, what do you mean exactly?

Joao Beck:

So, essentially-

Zach Peterson:

Make this more tangible.

Joao Beck:

So basically, kind of how the design flow works when it comes to how ECAD engineers or PCB designers communicate with the simulation engineer, the way it goes is essentially the PCB designer or ECAD designer would export an EDB file ODB plus, plus file, so the simulation engineer can upload that file, run his simulation, and then communicate all the results and the changes that need to be done. So all these communication, once you export data from a project, everything becomes manual. So first of all, you disconnect data from your project revision, the right time when you export that file, it becomes completely disconnected. So you're not sure which revision is coming from, unless you start making notes and saving or creating a specific folder name and structure you want.

Then when the simulation engineer uploads that file and runs the simulation, how does he communicate back to the ECAD engineer the changes that need to be done or the result within the plots? He has to go over outside his software, he needs to take multiple screenshots of the simulation results to explain and be very clear of the changes that need to be done. So most of the engineers I spoke with, they end up creating PowerPoint slides. So they take multiple screenshots, they create PowerPoint slides, they write description of what needs to be changed very thoroughly, and then they expect the ECAD engineer to receive that email with that presentation and understand and make the required change.

Then, that needs to be confirmed or approved or reanalyzed so he can make the changes exports the EDB file again, the simulation engineer imports that file and that goes over and over again. Since, you know well, how many times you simulate a PCB, right? It's not just a one time. You're probably going to do during the design, at the end of design multiple times. And for every iteration, again, new file needs to be uploaded, exported, and imported.

Zach Peterson:

So yeah, the current workflow, just like you say, the PowerPoints take a lot of time to create and I can't tell you how many times I've drawn boxes and arrows and text boxes and said, check out this graph, here's what's going on and making reference to another slide. And yeah, it's a lot of work just to communicate the simulation results sometimes, as well as what needs to be changed in a single document. And then sometimes it goes the other direction too. If I export the ODB plus plus or the EDB file, what do I have to do? Well, I have to point out to somebody who's running the program, "Hey, here's what we need simulated, here's how you have to set this up, here's the boundary conditions." Those kinds of things. So it goes the other direction too.

Joao Beck:

That's right. Yeah, exactly.

Zach Peterson:

So in this new workflow, you say a digital bridge, to me that sounds a little bit like you're taking the co-designer workflow that people know and enjoy so much, and extending it over to simulation.

Joao Beck:

Yes. The tool itself is essentially very, very similar to the MCAD co-designer or the MCAD collaboration. It's pretty much on the Altium side. It's a panel where you're going to push the data to the simulation engineer, and that goes again just the same way as the MCAD. It goes into Altium 365, where you have all the data managed there under revision, and then Ansys access the data from there as well. And they'll have a similar tool where they can push and pull data as well as making comments to specific objects.

Zach Peterson:

So the simulation engineer, they can pull that data into whichever Ansys product they are using, and then right there inside of Ansys, they can make comments and then push that back over to 365 instance?

Joao Beck:

So the tool or the toolbar actually works the first time you bring in into Ansys, the software that it uses is Ansys Electronic Desktop. So that's where you bring the EDB or the files in, and then inside the Ansys electronic desktop, you can pretty much use all Ansys tools. It's just the first door. Yeah?

Zach Peterson:

That was another thing I was going to ask was the capability, because sometimes when you do these integrations, it's not the full capabilities of whatever partner software you're using. It is like a few things, or a reduced set of capabilities, but you just said, this is a full suite of capabilities that's available in the other tool.

Joao Beck:

Yes, you can run any type of simulation you want within the Ansys world. You can run thermal, you can run power integrity, signal integrity, you can run mechanical and you can design an antenna there, just as if you were actually using, manually importing the files to Ansys.

Zach Peterson:

So if someone is going to add this capability to their team, in terms of bringing someone in here who is not necessarily an Altium user and bringing them into this environment, what does that workflow look like through 365? Does it match the same kind of thing that you would do with an MCAD engineer?

Joao Beck:

Yeah, the tool would work as pretty much, you are working with a design and then you want to share that design with the simulation engineer. You want him to run a simulation. So pretty much what you're going to do, you're going to be signed in, into your Altium 365, right? Once you're in your workspace, you're only going to click push, the data gets pushed into your server and you are now sharing your server or specifically that project, with the simulation engineer.

All he needs to do is sign in within Ansys, with his credentials and he'll have access to that project. He'll be able to read the comment and then he can start working on that design. The other great thing that I need to mention here, that it's a very time-consuming tasks for simulation engineer, is that for every iteration, every time you export and import, not only you spend time communicating the change intent or communicating back from simulation what needs to be changed exactly. But every time you import into Ansys, you have to set up all the simulation parameters. And that is, depending on the simulation you're running, it can be very time-consuming.

So imagine having to do 3, 4, 5 times for the same simulation analysis that you're trying to get approved and every time you have to, or the simulation engineer, has to input and set up all the parameters. With this tool, what happens is pretty much what happens with MCAD, where only the changes get supplied to the changes gets applied to the design or to the analysis. So you make the changes, they are applied and you simply rerun the simulation. All the parameters are already there in place.

Zach Peterson:

So it sounds like the Ansys, like AEDT file is actually getting entered into the revision history. Is that correct?

Joao Beck:

What gets entered into the revision is the EDB file, and then with the EDB file, when you run the simulation in Ansys, it actually generates a full report of the simulation. It collects all the plots that you generated and that gets archived within the project revision. So you would know exactly where to back up your claim, as in, I need you to make changes or change the capacitor value for this component for the sake of impedance optimization.

And then you have the backup data in the ECAD side now from Ansys, with all the plots showing, okay, that's the reason why we need to make those changes, and that gets saved for every new revision or every new iteration you make. So you have the full history of all the changes, all the communication, all the project reports or simulation reports that were created for that specific revision.

Zach Peterson:

What's really cool about this is, I mean, obviously really quickly getting your design into a simulation program like Ansys is really great. But tracking the results can be very difficult when you're doing these kinds of simulation workflows because I mean, like you say, you could generate all these different graphs and then you could make one small change on the design, and then, if you don't very precisely timestamp your design, the folders, enforce a file naming convention, if you're doing all this manually, you're going to lose track of where those graphs came from. And you're not going to know, well, which experiment did we run here? And so it sounds like you guys are putting this all into a report that could be viewable, what? As HTML? Is it a DOC? Is it a PDF?

Joao Beck:

Yeah, it's currently a PDF. And because it's a PDF, you can also access from your workspace through the browser. So say your manager wants to check out where you are within the project, he wants to have a look at the simulation files or the reports. He can go there and have a look within the whole PDF report of the simulation.

Zach Peterson:

Okay, I see. It's just one click through your workspace in the browser?

Joao Beck:

Exactly, yeah. You can actually access directly from Altium designer. I'm just saying that it also gets stored in Altium 365 so anyone else can access it.

Zach Peterson:

That makes a lot of sense. And then when you're dealing with this situation where maybe you have a multidisciplinary team, actually it's probably better to put it on the web because like I said earlier, not everybody who's going to be working on this is going to have access to this stuff through Altium designer. So you put it in 365 and give them a shareable link, then that's great. They can see everything.

Joao Beck:

Yes, including the comments. So if you make a comment to a specific component, it's going to be visible within the browser as well, so you can exchange messages and comments right through the browser, as well as within the software.

Zach Peterson:

I see, okay. So because you're generating this report and it's attached to your project in Altium, is it also getting entered into version control so you could then go back and access all of the earlier reports if you need to?

Joao Beck:

Yes, you can. Yes. Just like all the other Altium designer files there.

Zach Peterson:

So I would assume that also means that let's suppose we go through this simulation workflow and we're experimenting with something in the design because I mean, obviously you do that sometimes with simulation and you realize, hey, we've gone down this path for a while and our simulation is not producing the results that we expect. Let's go back to an earlier version of our simulation and try a new way to optimize this design. Can you do that? Can you go back to an earlier entry in the revision history, maybe clone it and then just branch off from there?

Joao Beck:

So what we can do, it's actually not driven by the simulation. You would go back to what revision of the design you want to start over again, and then from Altium you would just get that revision into the Ansys and then Ansys would be able to get the simulation from that point again. And so you can start over from point.

Zach Peterson:

Actually, that's actually a better way to do it too, if you link it to the actual thing you want to simulate and not just the simulation model, because if you're going down that path with experimenting with stuff, you've probably made a bunch of design revisions along the way that you might need.

Joao Beck:

So you're pretty much matching, one side drives it and the other one just adds up information to it, but you only driving from one side. You don't need to worry about the AEDT files that you're creating on the Ansys side.

Zach Peterson:

Okay, great, great. So you mentioned stuff like intended design. I'm going to assume you can also do things like transmission line design, unique interconnects, those types of simulations. But when you say you can access the suite of Ansys products, or maybe not products, but the suite of Ansys capabilities through this type of link, what are some of the other challenges that people have said they want to overcome with this type of tool and what are some of the other simulations that you can perform? I know you mentioned thermal and mechanical, but maybe dig down a little bit, tell us a little deeper.

Joao Beck:

Okay. So I'll tell you where we are at the moment and then where we want to go. So at the moment with the fully working revision that we have, the tool hasn't been released publicly yet, but we are in conversation with many of our customers and potential customers from Ansys side as well. And they are very excited about the tool and they really want to start testing it as alpha or beta users, early adopters. So we're working with that.

At the moment what we have, is we have the capability of making changes to the layer stack up, and that's bidirectional. I can make changes in the Altium designer, push it to Ansys, and I can also make changes in Ansys and push it back to Altium designer just like the MCAD does with the mechanical changes. Now, when it comes to more complex changes, we are still deciding what can be changed and what should be enabled to be changed from the Ansys side. Why? Because for example, if we allow simulation engineers to change component parameters, for instance, the component, it's not just the component value. If we go back into Altium designer, we have a whole component library with supply chain links, part numbers, and our library might be connected to a PLM system without, and that's pulling the right component ID.

So the way this would work is, and that's why I mentioned you can make comment to specific components, you're probably going to say, "Okay, this component, we need to change the value of this component." But that needs to be communicated from the Ansys or simulation side into Altium. The change has to be done or must be done from the Altium side, just for the sake of keeping everything organized and applying the right component ID to that board. We are working now on, for the next internal release, allowing changes, bidirectional changes to pads, vias and traces. So at the moment you would have to communicate that through comments, but that's coming very soon in the next few months.

So we'll be able to, from Ansys, also push back those changes. So say you have differential pair there, you ran a signal integrity, but the thickness of the track or traces need to be changed or increased or make it a little smaller. You can make those changes within Ansys and push back into Altium. And then in the future, we'll be able to pretty much exchange any object change. That's what we are looking forward and down the track, we'll be able to be changing pretty much any object from the Ansys side as well. Although the capability would allow them to push back the EDB file because we have the push or bidirectional, it would be smarter to just communicate the component value so the ECAD engineer makes the changes when it comes to component. But all the other objects then saying a polygon needs to be changed or designing an antenna. Those changes, in the future, they'll be able to be pushed back to Altium directly.

And this is what we've been hearing and been asked by most of the people we speak with about Altium. They love this new tool, they are really excited about it and they are coming up with all these ideas, "When we'll be able to push that or or pull this?" And so we adding that into our roadmap slowly and working on that too. Because essentially the EDB file contains pretty much all the design data, including the mechanical data and that's how-

Zach Peterson:

Parasol specification is almost built into.

Joao Beck:

Yeah, yeah. And that's why I mean, sorry if I didn't answer your previous question. When it comes to mechanical simulation, how would that work? We can enable the mechanical design to go along with the EDB file. You can have that information within the EDB too. I haven't actually ran myself a mechanical simulation, but all the required information would be within the EDB file.

Zach Peterson:

So that would allow you to do, let's say vibration analysis looking, some of these things that really matter, like defense aerospace for example?

Joao Beck:

Exactly.

Zach Peterson:

Okay. I can even imagine a time where the simulation and the mechanical guys go rogue, connector, and so you get this kind of bridge between all the different domains.

Joao Beck:

Yeah. So is I think it's the future of designing, where we build an ecosystem. And what Altium is trying to do, which I think it's the best route that we could possibly have, is that we are letting the companies decide what tool is the best for a specific discipline. So I think in myself, if I were to decide which tool I want to use for simulation, I would go, so the best in class for me is Ansys. I don't want to go with a packaged tool that has simulation as well if I know that the best tool for my needs is Ansys. I want to be able just to simply create this digital bridge where we can exchange files directly and become a whole ecosystem where we have what we call project or design continuity, where it goes from one discipline into another discipline into another discipline, until we have the end product.

Zach Peterson:

Yeah, I think because some of these other applications, including all the stuff from Ansys, is so popular and so well known, and there's such a large user base that has to interact with ECAD engineers, it makes perfect sense to offer this kind of digital bridge solution, rather than to have a fully bundled kind of solution that is entirely Altium branded. Because I think for companies, it's kind of attractive to try and trap people in the ecosystem, but you really aren't giving people the best solutions and helping them get to the result that matters to them.

Joao Beck:

I agree a 100%. So now they have the best PCB design tool and they can have that connected to the best simulation tool. And even if, probably they want to connect to the mechanical tool as well, they can decide which mechanical tool they want to connect to. We have that bridge as well, right?

Zach Peterson:

Yeah. And at the end of the day, I guess because all of these bridges start in Altium designer, whether it's through co-designer or plant panel or I guess whatever this new Ansys panel is going to be named, the ECAD person is running the show at the end of the day, they still maintain control.

Joao Beck:

Exactly, the order. Yeah.

Zach Peterson:

Okay. So we're running a little low on time, but I wanted to get to one other question here, which is I guess, more relevant to the broader suite of Ansys capabilities. Those guys are developing new stuff all the time. They have stuff beyond just the electronics design suite. I think they even have some really cool CFD stuff. Is there eventually going to be access to that kind of capability?

Joao Beck:

To be honest, we haven't spoken about this yet, but who knows? You know Altium, right? We are always asking ourselves, "How can we improve? How can we deliver what the customers want?" So we are not afraid of the new, when it comes down to improvements or new technologies being released. We were the pioneers in many things that we released in the past. So that's definitely a possibility. That's what I can say to you now.

Zach Peterson:

And then I have one last question as far as who this is for. This is something that I've been personally asked about by many individual designers, as well as designers who work at large companies. They're freelance or they're working for a Fortune 500 and anywhere in between, and they're all interested in this kind of capability. So I guess my final question is, who is this for? Is it for the big guys, the small guys, or for everybody?

Joao Beck:

This is for everybody. That's an interesting question because I remember when I first presented this tool to a customer and he was like, "Oh, this is so great so I don't have to export and import into Ansys?" And I said, "Yeah, everything is interconnected. It keeps under version control." And it's like, "Oh, that's really, really great. We are really excited about this tool. How can I share this with my colleague?" I said, are you doing the PCB design and the simulation?" And he said, "Yes."

Well, since everything is in Altium 365, it can even be shared with simulation engineers overseas. It could be shared with simulation engineers at a different design house, or as a service company serving as a third party simulation. So it's really for the small shops that want to have or keep everything organized within project revisions, which is really hard to keep up. And also for the big guys, where the communication is wasting or taking a lot of their times and all the error-prone you get from not being revisioned, a lot of design risk beings because of that as well. We don't know which revision that change came from, you ended up applying to a different project revision. So it's not specific to big customers or small shops. It's for everyone.

Zach Peterson:

Well, that's great to hear, especially because I know the little guys out there are really interested in this kind of thing, so this is really cool. And I'm sure as it starts to roll out and people can get access, we'll see more updates come soon.

Joao Beck:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think it's going to be awesome.

Zach Peterson:

Yeah, I'm really excited by this. Joao, thank you so much for joining us today.

Joao Beck:

Thank you, Zach.

Zach Peterson:

For those out there listening and watching on YouTube, we've been talking with Joao Beck, director of Enterprise Technical Marketing here at Altium. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the subscribe button. You'll be able to keep up with all of our episodes and updates and tutorials as they come out. And last but not least, don't stop learning, stay on track and we'll see you next time. Thanks everybody.