Any experienced engineer will tell you that power supply design is not a trivial exercise and bad design often leads to poor system reliability. For more than a decade now engineers have been able to use the Texas Instruments WEBENCH design tools to streamline power supply design.

The online software allows designers to quickly create, optimize and simulate a complete design using calculation algorithms and the SPICE simulator tool provided by the WEBENCH Power Designer software. Careful PCB layout can also be critical for power supply performance. Texas Instruments have now added PCB Export to the WEBENCH suite of design tools. This allows engineers to run electrical and thermal simulations to characterize their designs, create a power supply PCB layout, and export it to Altium, Cadence Design Systems, Inc., CadSoft Computer, Mentor Graphics and RS Components CAD platforms.

According to the press release WEBENCH Power Designer together with PCB Export will help reduce PCB board design time from hours to minutes and take into account best layout practices to reduce noise and thermal issues.