OpenBOM Autodesk Eagle integration and Autodesk MCAD-ECAD environment

I’ve been attending Autodesk University 2019 last week in Las Vegas, NV. During Design and Manufacturing Keynote, Stephen Hooper Autodesk Vice President and General Manager of Fusion 360 announced the big news – merging the two design environments of Autodesk Fusion 360 and Autodesk Eagle. Autodesk is the first CAD company that merge MCAD and ECAD environment to provide a unified user experience. 

Read more about it on Autodesk blog – New Electronics Capabilities Are Coming to Fusion 360. Here is an interesting passage from Autodesk news: 

We’ve heard from Fusion 360 users who want a tighter integration of electronic and mechanical design, so today we’re giving them the ability to capture, design, fit, and manufacture in real time. Users will no longer have to import files, massage incompatible data types, or face the typical disconnects that often come between mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) and electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) in separate software tools. Instead, they’ll have access to a complete set of PCB layout and schematic editing tools and library content, all in addition to the comprehensive mechanical design and manufacturing features that Fusion 360 has to offer in one package.    

Chad Jackson explains in his early predictions back in 2016 from his Lifecycle Insight blog – No more excuses: It is time to merge MCAD and ECAD why PCB design and MCAD must be integrated and what are real user problems this integration can solve. Here is a passage: 

First off, electronics, Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) specifically, have been increasingly prevalent in all sorts of traditional mechanical products for some time now. You see control systems exploding in cars and planes and trains and machinery and everything else. Literally, they are showing up everywhere. And in fact, you can’t have the IoT without PCBs in all those products.

Second, the development of these PCBs have a real mechanical problem. Thermal management is the today’s biggest single design issue for PCBs as designers integrate more and more powerful chipsets into their products. That generates heat that must be dissipated out of the enclosure. In fact, this issue has become so pressing that it is often the limiting factor in the entire product.

At OpenBOM, we’ve seen how MCAD and ECAD data management is coming to a very messy data management problem when a company is starting to work on the Bill of Materials, cost and purchase planning. No single person can hold an entire set of information. Engineers are looking at how to create a unified place to get Bill of Materials to coordinate activities. It as a mess of spreadsheets, emails, and people (often located in different places). Therefore, having multi-disciplinary BOM management features in OpenBOM was something we planning from very early days of OpenBOM development. 

OpenBOM is integrated with both MCAD and ECAD / PCB design tools, which makes an easy way to extract data from these CAD systems. You can check OpenBOM Integrations page for more details about supported integrations. 

OpenBOM is enhancing our integrations with Autodesk products. Today all three products in the manufacturing design domain of Autodesk are supported by OpenBOM. It includes Autodesk Fusion 360, Autodesk Inventor and now also Autodesk Eagle. 

In our recent announcement during Autodesk University 2019, we shared news about expanded Autodesk Fusion 360 integration and new Autodesk Eagle. There is absolute importance in OpenBOM enabling to share downstream information for Autodesk customers.

Autodesk strategy of cloud platform development is well aligned with OpenBOM multi-tenant SaaS data management and Bill of Materials management capabilities helping manufacturing companies to organize product data, collaborate in real-time and plan purchase orders. “Expanding Autodesk Fusion360 integrations and offering an improved user experience and support Fusion360 drawings dramatically expanding customer workflows. Combined with Autodesk Eagle and Autodesk Inventor integrations, OpenBOM is providing a unique way to manage purchases and collaborate using a multi-disciplinary BOMs” said Oleg Shilovitsky, CEO and co-founder of OpenBOM

“With this announcement, OpenBOM provides the Autodesk customers an easy and powerful way to manage downstream BOM management and purchasing process,” says Jim Quanci, Senior Director of Autodesk Development Network.

Earlier we shared information about new features in Autodesk Fusion 360. Check this out here – improved templates, support of Autodesk Fusion 360 Drawings and more. 

Today, I want to share more details about OpenBOM integrations with Autodesk Eagle.  It includes several important features: 

1- Enhanced setting and login features including locating function. 

2- Support for multiple libraries 

3- Support for flexible BOM creations. 

At OpenBOM we’re excited about Autodesk Fusion360 and Eagle merging environments. It will make user experience unified and will be better aligned with the ability to create Bill of Materials from both mechanical design and PCB components. At the same time, the data is still different. OpenBOM will be providing a dedicated toolset to extract data from Eagle Libraries, to provide special ways to extract PCB Bill of Materials and to create a unified Bill of Materials structure that can be used for cost assessment and purchasing planning. 

Here is the video with the new features of Autodesk Eagle – OpenBOM integration.

Conclusion.

OpenBOM supports both Autodesk Fusion 360 and Autodesk Eagle providing a dedicated toolset to create Bill of Materials for mechanical design as well as special features to extract information from Eagle libraries and PCB Bill of Materials. 

To have a tool to manage Bill of Materials data and sharing information downstream, calculating the cost and managing purchases is absolutely important for every small manufacturing company. 

By enhancing OpenBOM – Autodesk Eagle integration, we open a significantly improved way to manage multi-disciplinary BOM and sharing information for purchasing and production planning. 

Try OpenBOM today by registering to FREE OpenBOM User Subscription.  

Best, Oleg @ openbom dot com.

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