A Multidisciplinary Concurrent Design Environment for Consumer Electronic Product Design

Abstract

Most consumer electronic products are electromechanical systems consisting of mechanical components such as structures, enclo sures, and mechanisms combined with electrical components such as printed circuit boards (PCBs) power supplies wires (harness), and switches The design of such multidisciplinary products involves high coordination and cooperation between the two different engineering fields of mechanical and electrical design However, in spite of the advancements of CAD tool development in design automation technology within each field, a gap still exists for good communication between the designers in these two fields during the course of the design This gap makes the design process of such products time-consuming and error prone This paper describes a research effort that facilitates multidisciplinary con current design for consumer electronic products The focus is on how to integrate mechanical and electrical CAD tools into a more flexible and extensible concurrent design environment to share and communicate critical design information during the design process A multidisciplinary cuncurrent design environment based on the CAD framework concept is described Approaches for integrating the design data and information in such a multidisciplinary design environment are discussed A prototyping system for the concurrent design of consumer electronic products is also presented with two preliminary design examples