Overview

Flexible Circuit Board is a product which addresses flexible circuit board in a mechanical design context (MCAD) and interfaces with industry standard electrical CAD (ECAD) systems.

This product offers the following main functions:

• Data can be exchanged with ECAD Systems through IDF Files (import/export)
• Flexible circuit board geometry is designed within the global assembly product definition taking into account the mechanical context
• Spatial and technological flexible constraint areas can be created and managed
• Flexible circuit board definitions can be analyzed in the context of the full Digital Mock-Up
• Management of component placement
• Hole and cutout are supported
• Report capabilities.

The flexible PCBs (printed circuit boards) are more and more used by automotive and INI (telephone, flat screen, camera) industries, allowing to be placed in smaller spaces. This technology has a lot advantages like reliability against vibrations and temperature, weight and volume loss, liberty of conception. Moreover, a flexible PCB can often be an economic solution compared to classic rigid PCB.

Although Circuit Board Design Workbench manages 3D PCBs, it does not allow modelising a Flexible PCB. The Flexible PCB covers the full design process of flexible printed circuit board.

There is a lot of common points with the classical rigid PCB because the MCAD / ECAD communication is also based on IDF format.

The following objects will be managed by the V6 Flexible PCB:

• Board
• 3D electronic component
• Constraints areas
• Holes and pockets.

Before reading this guide, you should be familiar with basic Version 6 concepts such as document windows, standard and view toolbars.

We therefore recommend that you read the Infrastructure User's Guide that describes generic capabilities common to all Version 6 products. It also describes the general layout of Version 6.

You may also like to read the Part Design User's Guide, the Assembly Design User's Guide and the Sketcher User's Guide

To get the most out of this guide, we suggest you start reading and performing the step-by-step procedures in the scenarios, which gives complete information about the product's functionalities.

The Interface Description section, which describes the Circuit Board Design workbench, and the Accessing and Customizing Settings section, which explains how to set up the options, will also certainly prove useful.