January 13, 2009 -- R&D departments worldwide are reevaluating where their productivity can be increased and design costs reduced. Managers are turning towards new design strategies that can be incorporated to boost productivity and focus back on exploring and experimenting.

Electronics design is perhaps even more of a necessity in the current business climate of hiring freezes and reduced operating budgets. The various ways of performing rapid prototyping are suddenly getting a fresh look.

Can rapid prototyping be seriously considered for reducing development time and costs, and more importantly, expanding market position? It's a good time to take this idea on another road test.

The idea of prototyping has been in the industry a long time, and it hasn't exactly been a push-button process. First, the disconnected nature of most EDA tools in the industry has resulted in a myriad of differing types of design data that must be waded through, organized and managed.

Then there are the vast amounts of revision files from doing simple product variations. Complicated software configuration management systems are often needed just to manage it all. Creating a working prototype and the inevitable design respins usually results in a process that takes too long and is ineffective.

Instead, let's consider what can be done with a more unified design perspective and rapid prototyping. What can be done when engineers are allowed to explore innovation instead of just managing complexities, using a single design environment and data model, start to finish, for their product creations? Can it become a more automated process?

By Marcelle Douglas. (Douglas is a technical editor at Altium, Ltd.)