Evolution or Revolution?
The New Dimension in Electrical Design
How Electrical Engineers Moved from Paper Sketches to 3D
Over the past 260 years, the way we light our homes and power our businesses has
changed dramatically. We’ve traded candles for light bulbs, abandoned the abacus
for super computers, and swapped selenium wafers for energy-efficient solar panels.
We now have a generation of products that are connected to the internet to improve
the quality of our lives–think smart appliances, fitness monitors, and intelligent
trash cans. These innovations reflect advances in scientific thinking—and advances
in the way engineers design increasingly complex electrical systems. This
article describes some of the pivotal (and quirky) moments that shaped
Electrical design history and how SOLIDWORKS® Electrical 3D™ is on
the cutting edge of the new generation.
1752: Lightning in a … Kite?
Benjamin Franklin was an inventor, writer and statesman, but he was also an
engineer who developed electrical systems using hand sketches. His best-known
feat? Verifying that lightning is actually electricity.
In June 1752, history says that Benjamin Franklin sent a key attached to a homemade
kite into the air. “As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite,” he wrote,
“the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine,
will be electrified.” While there’s a good chance Franklin made up the tale, his theory
was ”electrifying.”
1879: A Little Menlo Park Magic
Picking up where Franklin left off, Thomas Alva Edison (aka the Wizard of
Menlo Park) held more than 1,000 patents. In 1879, he introduced the
electric light bulb. It lasted longer than previous models and employed a
carbonized cotton thread filament.
Edison made a host of other contributions to electrical design, including the
system of power stations now called General Electric, and schematics continued to
be the planning tool of choice.
Although a true technological genius, Edison wasn’t all butterflies and rainbows—
he electrocuted puppies, a horse, and an elephant in an attempt to label alternating
current (AC) power as dangerous. He lost this campaign and Nikola Tesla’s AC induction
motor won, mechanizing factory work and powering household appliances.
But that (admittedly creepy) anecdote hardly tells the full story of Edison’s life. He went
on to improve life for generations of Americans with the phonograph, motion pictures,
the storage battery, and more.
1907: Vacuum Tubes
Throughout the 20th century, electrical engineers used schematics
to represent increasingly complicated systems for radio, medical
devices, and computers. In 1907, Lee De Forest patented the audion,
which enabled clearly audible sounds such as a human voice to be
relayed and amplified using a three-electrode vacuum tube–the
world’s first triode.
1929: Machine Packs Serious Voltage
Wiring diagrams based on physical connections entered the electrical
engineering vocabulary in 1929, when Alabama native Robert Jemison
Van de Graaff built the first working model of an electrostatic accelerator.
Its purpose: accelerate particles, break apart atomic nuclei, and unlock
the secrets of individual atoms. Van de Graaff’s invention is used widely in
science classrooms and paved the way for future electrical research.
1947: Transistor Transition
Schematics advanced yet again when electrical engineers began creating them
based on logical connections. A major breakthrough occurred in 1947 when John
Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley collaborated to demonstrate the transistor—
which amplifies or switches electrical signals—at Bell Laboratories. The semiconductor, which
paired two gold contacts and a germanium crystal, represented an upgrade from cumbersome
vacuum tubes.
1977: We’ve Gone Digital!
By the late 1970s, functions such
as placement and routing became
available in automatic physical
electronic design automation (EDA)—
marking the birth of the digital
schematic. Bell Labs, along with
companies such as IBM and RCA,
held advanced tools that operated on
mainframes or 8-bit minicomputers.
In 1977, super minis provided
massive amounts of memory for
designs.
Evolution or Revolution? The New Dimension in Electrical Design
2
Today: Entering a New Dimension
©2014 Dassault Systèmes. All rights reserved. 3DEXPERIENCE, CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, SIMULIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, GEOVIA, EXALEAD, NETVIBES, 3DSWYM, and 3DVIA are registered trademarks of Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries in the
U.S. and/or other countries. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
For decades, companies have developed products that feature both mechanical and electrical
components. The traditional product development process for an electromechanical product has
created long design cycles due to sequential electrical and mechanical design, as well as the
discontinuities which occur when different groups use different names for common elements.
There are challenges in keeping the Bill of Materials (BOM) accurate through the use of
so many spreadsheets. Often, once the electrical design piece has been completed,
it is then handed off to the mechanical design team. After they complete their part
of the design, the entertaining part happens when it comes to figuring out how the
electrical pieces fit into the product. A physical prototype is built at this point and
the designers get out a ball of string or a measuring tape to figure out how the wiring
will fit. Given all the powerful software design tools we have, it’s ironic that we have
fallen back to low-tech ways of integrating the electrical and mechanical pieces of the
design. As you might expect, this method is prone to introducing lots of errors
and delays into the production process, product documentation, and BOM.
Things have evolved a bit over the last couple years. Electrical
schematics entered the third dimension in 2012, when SOLIDWORKS
introduced powerful and affordable 3D electrical CAD software for
Windows, merging the logical connections championed by Benjamin
Franklin with the modern day need to build 3D physical connections.
Using SOLIDWORKS® Electrical software, you can easily design electrical schematics and
transform the logical schematics into 3D physical models which integrate into the overall
design. SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D™ integrates with SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD modeling software
to enable bi-directional and real-time integration of electrical components within the 3D model
maintaining design synchronization and an accurate BOM. In this way, the entire engineering
team can collaboratively work on a project concurrently, which not only produces a more
integrated design; it can also lower project costs, and shorten time to market.
Another benefit of the integrated SOLIDWORKS solution for electromechanical design is the
ability to analyze or simulate the operation of the entire model against real-world conditions,
such as thermal stress or physical vibration–all without having to build a physical prototype.
This seems like “common-sense” (which even a man like Benjamin Franklin would appreciate if
he were alive today).
From light bulbs to intelligent trash cans—and from handwritten notes on paper napkins to 3D
modeling—one thing is clear: electrical design has entered the next dimension.
For more information:
US and Canada 800 693 9000
+1 781 810 5011
www.SOLIDWORKS.com
Our 3DEXPERIENCE® platform powers our brand applications, serving 12 industries, and provides a rich
portfolio of industry solution experiences.
Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, provides business and people with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovations. Its world-leading
solutions transform the way products are designed, produced, and supported. Dassault Systèmes’ collaborative solutions foster social innovation, expanding
possibilities for the virtual world to improve the real world. The group brings value to over 170,000 customers of all sizes in all industries in more than 140
countries. For more information, visit www.3ds.com.
Americas
Dassault Systèmes
175 Wyman Street
Waltham, Massachusetts
02451-1223
USA
Europe/Middle East/Africa
Dassault Systèmes
10, rue Marcel Dassault
CS 40501
78946 Vélizy-Villacoublay Cedex
France
Asia-Pacific
Dassault Systèmes K.K.
ThinkPark Tower
2-1-1 Osaki, Shinagawa-ku,
Tokyo 141-6020
Japan