Maxim has added a heat sink to meet thermal compliance.
I need to accommodate this in the mechanical design and send the revised placement back
to the hardware designer, as there are interferences between the components and the new heat sink.
Design Rule Manager in NX allows me, as a mechanical designer, to configure design rules
to identify interferences between components, board geometry, mechanical models like the
heat sink we have in our design, and copper elements.
I will first create a quick rule between components to each other.
This is a 3D clearance rule that states that any component less that 0.175mm distance to
another component will result in a violation.
I also have several corporate standard rules that have already been defined in my template
assembly that were automatically created in my project.
Now that my rules are designed in design rule manager, I can now perform an analysis to
identify the interferences in the NX assembly.
I have several discrete component to component interferences that I can see in design rule
explorer that I need to review.
The first set of violations appear to be discrete components placed on the secondary surface
of the PCB.
I can accept these violations as it was placed by the electrical engineer, using their own
design rules.
However I can also see there are several interferences with the heat sink that we inserted due to
thermal simulation.
There are certain components that we need to move to avoid the interference with the heatsink.
You can see, as I move these parts to avoid the interference I can see in design rule explorer that the
violation disappears when they match our design constraints.
This allows me to find and resolve interferences very quickly in my design.
Once I am satisfied with the placement I have done to avoid interferences with my mechanical
assembly, I will send a proposal file of the newly moved components and heatsink to the
hardware engineer to review and apply in their design.
I have a new update from the mechanical designer to which I need to import into my PCB design.
I will open MCAD Collaborator and review the content.
I can see that the mechanical designer moved several components in my design.
I initially see no issues and accept all changes and apply the proposal file.
The proposal file was accepted.
However our DRC identified an issue with the U4007.
This based on our component-to-component clearances in Xpedition that are not known by NX.
I will need to resolve this placement issue and send a counter proposal to the mechanical
designer to define the placement of U4007 will not break our electrical design rules.
The initial placement from the mechanical designer moved U4007 too close to the SO-DIMM
connector and violated our component-to-component design rules.
However, the IC is currently colliding with the heatsink.
To resolve the problem, I will move the IC and the capacitor to resolve this violation.
As I moved the component, I can see dynamically when I have resolved the problem from changing
the component color from red to yellow.
Now that I have applied my changes I will send a counter proposal of the component placement
of the IC and capacitor that I moved back to the mechanical design to be applied in
the printed circuit card assembly within NX.