New Look SOLIDWORKS Printed Circuit Boards

On July 1st, SOLIDWORKS officially released SOLIDWORKS PCB and SOLIDWORKS PCB Connector into the world, giving everyone the ability to design circuit boards and integrate those designs seamlessly with SOLIDWORKS MCAD. This software was developed in partnership with Altium, who has been a leader in delivering great PCB software to the market for over 25 years. More and more companies are trying to break into the IOT (Internet of things) market, making their products “smart,” and have a multitude of PCB software items to choose from, so naturally a lot of people are interested in learning about what exactly SOLIDWORKS PCB can do so they can compare it with the other options out there.

We recently did a webinar to give a live look at what SOLIDWORKS PCB has to offer that the other software out there doesn’t: a tightly integrated collaboration between ECAD and MCAD. Without the need to export/import step or dxf files at every design phase, you can save a lot of time and reduce errors. There are many benefits to using SOLIDWORKS PCB even as a standalone application, making it easy have a library of parts that you can share among users. The schematic symbols and board footprints are linked to manufacturer part numbers to that you can draw your schematic and quickly populate the board with the correct footprints. Drawing your schematics and routing the board is easy, with a lot of keyboard shortcuts you’ll quickly learn and love. As you go along, utilize the collaboration tool to keep track of who made what changes, and push the design back and forth between the board designer and the mechanical designer. Watch the video below to see it in action. If you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section at the bottom of the page!