DALLAS -- Texas Instruments has unveiled WEBENCH PCB Export, a new feature in the company's online WEBENCH Power Designer tool, for use in creating a power supply printed circuit board layout and exporting it to various CAD platforms.

A significant challenge in power supply design is creation of the PCB layout. Design engineers rely on application notes, manual copying of reference layouts and their own judgment to create board layouts. Unwanted noise and thermal problems can result from improper board layout and it can take multiple design iterations to achieve the best layout. The new tool can be used to design power supplies and the PCB Export feature downloads the layout directly to five popular CAD tools, TI said in a press release.

“With the addition of PCB export capability to WEBENCH Power Designer, the engineer no longer needs to manually enter the design into the CAD platform, nor is there a need to worry about errors made in the process,” said Josh Moore, product marketing director for the Custom IC and PCB Group, Cadence. “Now, designs created with WEBENCH Power Designer easily and instantly download via WEBENCH PCB Export to Cadence Allegro platforms.”

The free WEBENCH tools are said to simplify and accelerate the design and simulation process, and the latest enhancements run electrical and thermal simulations for characterizing the design. The WEBENCH Power Designer algorithms can quickly create a custom PCB board layout with minimal noise and thermal issues, TI said.

Footprints for each component of the WEBENCH design are included. The tool exports to CAD tools from Altium, Cadence, CadSoft, Mentor Graphics and RS Components.