CAE for PCB thermal analysis 1

[pbl69]

Hi everyone....
I need help on PCB thermal analysis programs. My company is starting a project involving PCB thermal analysis and they asked me about what's the best software in order to deal with PCB thermal analyis. I'm an ANSYS user but I never used it on PCB isuues. I was browsing internet and I found some programs like Ansoft (Ansys) and FloTherm.PCB (Flomerics). Anyone has an idea what program is a good choice for PCB thermal aplications??... Could be a good choice to use Ansys (multiphysics)???... What about Fluent or CFX??? these are CFD but I guess We'll have to deal with heat gradients and cooling isuues.
I appreciate any help on this subject...

Regards,
Pablo

 

[IRECAD]

Hi Pablo,
I'm a PCB/Mechanical Engineer in the Power Electronics field, I use CFDesign from Blue Ridge Numerics it wasn't my first choice but the costs involved dictated it was the final choice, I evaluated ICEPAK (from ANSYS) & Flotherm & FLOPCB both from Flomerics - both very good - FLO PCB was pretty basic. I tried Ansys multiphysics before as well but this was not intuitive from a Electronics point of view. I'm very happy with CFdesign its an excellent package for Electronic CFD. You will need a 3D front end with it though I use Solidworks & to cut down on repetitive Geometric work your ECAD software should be able to output IDF format ( I use Cadence Allegro aka Orcad for this) Its quick to set up & start solving & easy to run a number of different scenarios.
IRECAD

 

[pbl69]

Hi IRECAD,
Firstable thanks for your reply to my issue. Please let me ask you just a few things (I've 0.00 experience on PCB!!!!)...
A)the learning curve for CFDesign. Is it an "easy" program to be learn & used for people like me that have ANSYS experience (and a few runs with ALGOR).
B)We're using Solidworks & CATIA as our 3D packages. I red CFDesign has some plug-ins for SW and CATIA. I've never used SW & CATIA for PCB applications....If our customer is going to give us the PCB model, will we need to get a special plug-in for CFDesign?.... If we will have to create the model, will we need a special CAD for this?
Once Again thanks in advance!!!!!

Pablo

 

[IRECAD]

Hi Pablo,
In response
A) I guess everything is relative but if you use Ansys then yes CFDesign is "easy" it has a very quick set-up time incl meshing ...obviously depending on the complexity of the PCB model.
B)There is a direct interface between SW & CFdesign.... If your customer supplies IDF output then you will need to import into 3D first & ensure the model is "split" into the individual components (SW uses circuitworks to achieve this)& not imported as a homogeneous block into CFD since that treats the entire model as a single part. Bear in mind that ideally the customer must supply the component heights in his output - this is not necessary for just PCB design alone.

 

[pbl69]

Thanks a lot IRECAD!!!!