Designers Workbench -- Efficient and Economical Design Aids

Abstract

Designers Workbench is an interactive approach to design aids integration that overcomes most of the impediments that normally restrict the use of these aids. This paper first explores the problems encountered by users in trying to interface their design process with existing design aids and the problems of the design aids development organizations in meeting their users' needs. The design processes discussed include the electrical design, test development, and physical design for both computer architecture circuit pack design and custom electronics design, from the silicon level through the circuit pack level. Designers Workbench provides extensive on-line tutorials that greatly simplify the training of new users and buffers the user from the idiosyncracies of the computers on which the programs run. All job control, file management and data translations are provided automatically by the system. The design aids programs were left unchanged on their original computers and are accessed via a computer network. This reduced the initial development cost as well as providing a method for easy integration of any new programs that become available. Initial usage of DWB has indicated that this approach greatly increases the user acceptance of the design aids.