How to modularize/standardize your Electrical Design

A lot of customers and designers out there want to know how to modularize and standardize their designs and rightly so. The benefits of having standardized design and modularizing of your systems goes well beyond just faster product design and shortened time to market. It allows you to reduce the overall cost in purchasing by buying known components, preferred vendors and negotiated prices. It also allows to you provide options to your customers that you could not provide before while increasing overall quality both in design and manufacturing with standard design which can be configured to yours and the customer’s needs.

E3 WireWorks makes it very easy to achieve these goals without having to jump through hoops. E3 WireWorks lets you save your designs be it a small part or a section with multiple sheets and everything in between. The design you save can simply be dragged into any project and they become a part of you project along with all the information that was a part of it like bill of materials, connections, cable etc.

The next question generally is what parts of the design can be standardized or modularized; well the answer changes from company to company and system to system. Having said that there are a few rules of thumbs and things to do that I like to follow –

1. Identify from your previous designs what part of your design you are using again and again but haven’t standardized yet.
2. Carefully study your common designs to identify stand alone systems which are being plugged together. These are the easiest and the first systems that you can re-use.
3. When making new designs think about how you can use parts of your design in it and build on it – this process should give you a good idea of parts that can be leveraged for other designs as well.
4. Don’t try to completely modularize your design at first. This is a very common mistake which slows down the process. Take only the most obvious one’s first and build on it. You will get ideas for design changes that can lead to higher modularization/ standardization this way that going to 100% modular design.

These are simple steps to take but very effective if given careful consideration but along with these steps using the right tool for the job is very important. Without the right tool making your modular systems intelligent or flexible can be a difficult task and could deter progress.

Once you are on your way with modular design, there are more tools that E3 WireWorks provides that can help you make your modularized design more effective and configurable. The tool I am talking about is Options and Variants. Keep your eyes on this stream for more on it.

If anyone has more ideas on how to modularize and standardize design please feel free to share with us, let’s collaborate to make better designs.