Electronic components are electrically connected within a board known as printed circuit boards (PCBs). This is the core component in most of the electronic appliances and it has numerous applications. The devices we use in our everyday lives like a refrigerator, microwave, washing machine, computer, laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc. have PCBs embedded in them. Most of the engineering industries deal with electronic circuits and PCB is used to manufacture these circuits. The number of usage of PCBs have increased as we incorporated more of electronics to develop the product.

The electronic and electrical engineering graduate willing to have a successful career in a core electronic industry should understand PCB design thoroughly. Other discipline engineers like hardware design, manufacturing, testing and mechanical should have some knowledge on PCB design since they also need to access, review and analyse the design and the manufacturing data of PCBs and their Integrated Circuit (IC) packages.

A PCB from design to manufacturing consists of multiple processes with different types of analysis like signal integrity, power integrity, thermal analysis, followed by verifications and the manufacturing steps. All these analyses are done by using different simulation tools and the development time of a PCB may be more. Altair PollEx is the simulation tool where all these processes can be achieved through a single simulation software.

Altair PollEx is a PCB level electronic design automation (EDA) software suite covering design, analysis, verifications and manufacturing to significantly reduce development cycles while providing a common application for electrical, electronic and manufacturing engineers. Using this simulation software, we can test the circuit to ensure its functionality before fabrication. Hence, the process becomes easy, fast and obtains accurate results.

Altair PollEx is an open solution, which transfers data flawlessly between different electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) and simulation environments.

• PollEx can import designs from different major ECAD vendors, such as Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Zuken and Altium, as well as industrial neutral formats like ODB++ and IPC2581.
• Using the imported PCB design, PollEx supports verification of design for manufacturability (DFM), design for assembly (DFA), and design for electrical engineering (DFE), along with analyses (SI and thermal). DFM, DFA and DFE are the powerful rule-based checking tools to detect faults early in design.
• PCB Modeler supports design review, query, search, measure, net 3D, net topology, data extraction and the possibility to save and securely share specific areas of the design. Another powerful function is the automatic comparison between PCB designs, schematics and BOM data.
• PollEx PCB Verification checks the quality of designs in terms of manufacturing, assembly and electrical engineering.
• PollEx PCB Solvers provide signal integrity and board level thermal analysis.
• All analyses are supported by a built-in material library, with parts’ properties obtained from Unified Part Libraries (UPFs).

Many engineering teams are using Altair Pollex, in order to effectively overcome the challenges of PCB design performance, quality requirements, and manufacturing cost reduction. The Pollex PCB software suite has been adopted by electronics, electrical and manufacturing engineers from leading organizations like Samsung, Intel, LG and Sony.