Printed Circuit Board (PCB)

Printed Circuit Board (PCB) is the data object describing the physical electrical interconnect substrate that mechanically supports and electrically connects components via conductive tracks etched on copper layers. In PLM, the PCB is a structured artifact composed of a schematic, a board layout, a stack-up, drill files, a fabrication drawing, and an assembly bill of materials — together comprising the design dataset (often Gerber, ODB++, or IPC-2581) released for fabrication.

What it covers

• Schematic — logical circuit captured in EDA tooling.
• Layout — physical placement, routing, and copper geometry on each layer.
• Stack-up and materials — layer count, dielectrics, copper weights.
• Manufacturing dataset — Gerber/ODB++/IPC-2581, drill files, pick-and-place, fabrication drawing.
• PCB Assembly (PCBA) — populated board with its component BOM, AVL, and reference designators.

Relationships (see sidebar)

• Supports the Detailed Design, CAE Analysis, and Prototyping and Validation processes.
• Dependency of the EDA / IC Design capability — PCB layout is the canonical EDA-on-board workflow.
• Connects to MCAD via the ECAD↔MCAD bridge for thermal, mechanical fit, and EMI co-design.