Sherlock - Automated Design Analysis software

Sherlock - Automated Design Analysis software Description:

Wouldn't it be nice to see into the future?

With Sherlock by DfR Solutions, you can. Sherlock is a new Automated Design Analysis Tool that allows you to predict product failure earlier in the design process, allowing you to design reliability right into the product. And with results in hours instead of weeks, you'll be able to deliver these products faster and more efficiently, contributing to your customer's success. Didn't see that coming, did you?

The Future of Design

Sherlock Automated Design Analysis is the future of design. It is the integration of design rules, best practices, and a return to a physics-based understanding of product reliability.

By focusing on all aspects of design as early in the product development process as possible, and avoiding build-test-fix inefficiencies, engineering teams are seeing dramatic improvements in time to market and a reduction in development costs. In response to ‘smaller-faster-cheaper’ demands from their primary customers, electronic component manufacturers are designing and fabricating components with shorter lifetimes. Worldwide legislation is increasingly requiring the use of more environmentally friendly materials (lead-free, halogen-free, etc.) in design. Capturing the risks associated with these changing demands requires the use of physics of failure.

Physics of failure based Sherlock, leverages the knowledge and understanding of the processes and mechanisms that induce failure to predict reliability. Traditionally, physics of failure analysis was time consuming.

With the introduction of Sherlock Automated Design Analysis, product failure can be predicted sooner

• Improving overall product performance
• Speeding time to market
• Increasing profitability
• Enhancing customer satisfaction

How Sherlock Works

Unlike any other product on the market, Sherlock works with the files that the design team already creates. The same file set that would allow your manufacturer to assemble the boards in the factory allows Sherlock to build the boards in the virtual world. Once the data is imported, users can review the data and either approve the interpretation, or dig down deeper and provide more detail to the analysis. This allows engineers to spend their time improving their product, not entering data.

• Phase 1: Data Input - Identifies your files and imports your parts list automatically » Builds a finite element analysis model of your circuit board in minutes.
• Phase 2: Sherlock Analysis - Produces a holistic analysis that is critical in the development of reliable electronics products. Assessment options include: thermal, shock & vibe,  time to failure, part failure.
• Phase 3: Report & Recommend - Presents results in multiple formats (tabular, histogram, life curve, overlay) and outputs comprehensive, professionally formatted report for broad distribution.

Make a prediction!

The greatest potential for improvement is before the first prototype is ever built. Sherlock takes the most requested qualification tests and most common customer environments and packages them for you allowing you to predict design weaknesses sooner and improve designs earlier and more cost effectively. Sherlock tests include:

Virtual Thermal Cycling - Save months of test time, or guarantee success at qualification, by putting your design through ‘virtual temperature cycling’ and get results in minutes!
 
Virtual Vibration - Calculate the response of your design to vibration loads without the hassle of full finite element modeling (FEA). Sherlock utilizes the outputs generated by all EDA tools (Mentor, Cadence, Altium, CAD350, Zuken, etc.) to automatically generate the models necessary to assess random and harmonic vibration concerns.

Plated Through Hole (PTH) Fatigue - Compute life of every plated through hole on your board based on thermal gradients, board materials, and PTH quality. Find weak points with only a few clicks of your mouse.

Conductive Anodic Filaments (CAF) - Determine the risk of CAF formation based on PTH separation, material selection and the intended use environment.

Solder Joint Fatigue - Using robust, fully validated algorithms and an automatic package identification process, predict the solder joint reliability of all of your electronic components. With Sherlock’s intuitive interface and easy commands, capture the influence of different board materials, board stackup, component location, and solder alloys on part lifetime.

Virtual Shock - Understand your design’s susceptibility to mechanical shock before a single prototype is built.