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PADS Professional Premium DFM: harnessing DFM for a better and faster NPI

By Jim Martens and Susan Kayesar

PADS Professional Premium DFM is a new solution that brings world-class, comprehensive Design for Manufacture (DFM) analysis directly into your PADS Professional Premium environment.

PADS Professional Premium DFM contains everything offered with PADS Professional Premium including schematic capture, PCB Layout, pre and post layout simulation, analog/mixed signal simulation, cloud-based data management and collaboration, integration with multiple component distributors to identify supply chain issues, and part research, selection, and downloadable part symbols and footprints.

Test your designs for manufacturability using rules provided by participating manufacturers or using default DFM definitions-based Siemens’ deep knowledge and expertise in the electronics industry.

This easy-to-adopt DFM solution allows you unlimited access to fabrication analysis performed by our cloud-based Valor DFM engine, from the comfort of your familiar eCAD software. Run the analysis and review the results without ever leaving the cockpit of PADS Professional. Early and frequent testing of PCB designs for manufacturability allows you to eliminate costly design errors that can significantly delay your NPI process and affect product quality.

Why DFM?

In research conducted by Siemens in 2020, and re-confirmed in 2022, we found that almost a third of PCB projects miss their release date, due to manufacturability issues that cause time-consuming and expensive re-spins.

graph showcasing data collected from a lifecycle insights survey

Testing designs for manufacturability prior to handoff enables you to avoid these design pitfalls, reduce waste of materials, resources, and energy, and successfully meet your product release deadlines by achieving first time right manufacture.

Why PADS Professional Premium DFM?

The new PADS Professional Premium DFM offering allows users access to state-of-the-art DFM analysis capabilities fully integrated in the layout software.

Projects that are saved in Connect for PADS Professional can undergo a DFM analysis quickly and effectively using DFM profiles (rule sets) that have already been configured by manufacturers and industry leaders on our PCBflow cloud-based platform.

There is no need for DFM setup, configuration, upgrade or maintenance. No IT overhead. No extra storage space or computing power needed. The DFM engine runs on the Siemens PCBflow cloud, so you can be assured that you’re accessing the latest version and analysis algorithms.

DFM results are instantly available directly in the PADS Professional Hazard Viewer. Cross probing is automatic so you can fix the issues as you review them. No need to learn a new tool – everything you need is in your existing software.

Your subscription to PADS Professional Premium DFM includes 12 months of unlimited access to Design for Fabrication Analysis. Test your designs for manufacturability as often as you like. We suggest adding at least 2-3 DFM analyses to your design workflow.

In addition, a PDF format report of the analysis results is stored Connect project, for offline reference or sharing as needed.

Enhance your DFM experience with PCBflow.com

PADS Professional Premium DFM customers can use the same account to visit www.PCBflow.com, which is the fully independent Siemens online DFM tool. Log in to PCBflow to better understand and compare DFM profiles that have been provided for you, connect with manufacturers to gain access to private DFM profiles, or create your own custom DFM profiles to use in PADS Professional Premium DFM. As an added bonus, you can price and source your BOM using PCBflow, before you start your project.

Watch our webinar!

Learn more about PADS Professional Premium DFM by watching our on-demand webinar: Catch manufacturability issues early with integrated DFM analysis!

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/electronic-systems-design/2023/06/07/pads-professional-premium-dfm-harnessing-dfm-for-a-better-and-faster-npi/