Javelin now offers SOLIDWORKS PCB (formerly PCBWorks) for Printed Circuit Board Design

PCBWorks Design Tool

Javelin Technologies, known across Canada for working alongside designers to help turn their concepts into reality, has partnered with Altium to offer a new PCB (printed circuit board) design tool.

PCBWorks was created specifically for collaboration using SOLIDWORKS® computer-aided design (CAD) software and includes a number of features to link design data between electrical and mechanical environments. PCBWorks is now available for purchase through Javelin.

Intensely focused on training and ongoing support, Javelin is a Certified Reseller for SOLIDWORKS and a full range of Stratasys 3D printers that can produce finely detailed, true-to-life models, prototypes, and parts.

Javelin’s managing director John Carlan says that with PCBWorks, Altium has delivered collaboration at its best.

“PCBWorks seamlessly combines the mechanical and PCB design silos, the integration with SOLIDWORKS is simple and smooth, yet still allows designers to excel in their own domains. You want to accelerate production and reduce design costs? This is how you do it. This is a great addition to our product portfolio that customers will appreciate.”

Meeting the need for collaboration and change management

Mechanical and electrical designers have often been at odds with each other in the design process, having battled with the necessity for collaboration, yet always lacking the proper tools to achieve this balance. Lawrence Romine, Director of Global New Business Development at Altium, says PCBWorks improves upon this traditionally separate workflow process by providing a common link that unites them.

“The design process is finally following the unified product experience, where all of the separate variables are treated as one universal whole. PCBWorks is pushing this vision forward, allowing the experts in either design domain to maximize their efficiency while maintaining a connection to the larger design process.”

PCBWorks includes features that connect design data with mechanical designers in SOLIDWORKS. Designers no longer have to struggle with current collaboration methods such as STEP importing/exporting. Electrical and mechanical designers can both work in their own workflows while actively pushing design revisions back and forth to keep each other on the same page.

Design collaboration features in PCBWorks include:

• An ECAD/MCAD project collaboration server that links SOLIDWORKS mechanical models to electrical data in a single managed project. Changes made to either side of the design process can be pushed with a managed Engineering Change Order Process.
• Parasolid file format natively supported in SOLIDWORKS allows electrical designers to link directly to models for enclosures and component bodies for precise visual accuracy in Native 3D.
• Extracted copper information from board assemblies provides mechanical designers with more simulation options in SOLIDWORKS® including thermal, vibration, and mechanical simulations.

While PCBWorks focuses heavily on collaboration, it includes all of the latest PCB design technology from Altium, with a unified design environment between schematic capture and PCB layout and a streamlined interface.

For more information about PCBWorks

Read our recent PCBWorks blog post for a demo video, images, and detailed explanation to help potential users understand PCBWorks. Or call 1-877-219-6757.