Avoiding rework and shipment delays are key goals for Electronics & High-Tech firms, given that production delays and quality errors impact output and time-to-market. Having a means to validate the accuracy of designs during the manufacturing assembly process is priceless.
For example, with AutoVue, Electronics & High-Tech firms can validate that their converted CAM files have been properly generated before sending them out to PCB manufacturers for manufacturing by evaluating them against original ECAD design files. This ensures that the correct product is built and prevents manufacturers from rejecting designs, saving both time and money. Usage of AutoVue’s compare feature also enablesElectronics & High-Tech companies to confirm that whatever changes were made to the converted CAM files by the PCB manufacturers, are in accordance with the original design intent.
Once the bare board has been built by suppliers, all the components need to be installed and connected onto the bare board. Developmental and prototype manufacturing facilities can take advantage of AutoVuein order to quickly and visually determine which components should be installed in which locations, and ensure that everything works properly. Rather than relying on long assembly instructions and painful visual searches, AutoVue provides users with a complete list of all components on the board. Clicking on a component highlights its location on the board and vice versa, lettings users easily find components by part number, location, board side, etc. Some customers like Harris Corporation for instance managed to reduce time spent on creating PCB assembly instructions from hours to minutes (watch the video here), and enabled users to find specific components in AutoVue without needing to conduct a long litany of visual searches.
Another benefit of using AutoVue for PCB manufacturing and testing engineering is to speed up board debugging. Test engineers’ mission is to validate that the board works fine. If they find problems, they need to cross-reference components between the schematic and the layout to identify where the problem occurred. Using AutoVue and its cross-probing capability, test engineers can easily locate the faulty component on the PCB drawing and instantaneously highlight its location in the schematic. Test engineers can then determine whether the defect impacts other components, identify the root cause of the issue and relay all this feedback in a visual manner to the design team, ensuring rapid resolution and fast new product development cycles.
If you want to find out more about how AutoVue can help streamline the manufacturing and testing engineering processes, you can do so by reading our AutoVue for EHT solution brief and watching our EHT video on Youtube