ECAD/MCAD Collaboration

2005 - 2008

The integration of mechanical and electronic components in mechatronic integrated products is becoming increasingly important. Development takes place primarily in separate domains using different CAD tools (ECAD and MCAD). Although powerful software tools are available on the market for the respective disciplines, support for existing processes and systems is reaching its functional limits with regard to collaboration between these systems.

The objective of the ECAD/MCAD Collaboration project is therefore to provide opportunities for true collaboration. With increasing product complexity and the demand for shorter development cycles and an increase in product quality, solutions for implementing close collaboration on the basis the existing ECAD and MCAD systems are thus being developed.

The ProSTEP iViP project group published its results as the ProSTEP iViP Recommendation PSI 5 in the first quarter of 2008.

On the basis of these results, Mentor and PTC has created initial prototypes which have generated a great deal of interest in engineering circles and which were also used to validate and further develop the data schema specified in PSI 5, which is based on STEP AP 210 and AP 214.