In June, RS components had conducted two DesignSpark PCB workshops to the engineers of Renesas's Analog and Power Device Product team in Shanghai and ShenZhen, China.

During these two workshops, we shared with the team on how to design PCBs utilize DesignSpark PCB in difference stages of electronic design process. Here are the topics we have discussed:

-    DesignSpark PCB functional overview

-    How to create a component symbol for Renesas

-    Demonstrate how to turn a schematic diagram (using Renesas Reference - Design) into a PCB Layout, then generate a Gerber and BOM list, and a 3-D preview

-    Export PCB into IDF format, convert them using PCB converter for Sketchup for 3D editing

-    How does DesignSpark help FAEs and AEs to get more business

The workshops are very interactive and many questions were asked. The engineers showed enthusiastic interest to introduce DesignSpark PCB to their customers and partners. One of the engineers even told us that the install file being just 63MB, will save him much work from carrying a big file on a USB stick. It is very common for FAEs in China to spend hours to install a PCB tool at the customer's site to carry out schematic review with customers.  Therefore, DesignSpark PCB is an ideal tool for them. Also, they liked the simple and easy to use interface very much.

We received lots of feedbacks and suggestions on how to enhance DesignSpark PCB further to benefit the community. We treasured these inputs and they will be included in our work list in future versions.

Here is the Renesas RX78 CPU development board redraws with DesignSpark PCB as an example in these workshops.