Bridging the Gap Between MCAD and ECAD: Key Takeaways From the 2025 Hawk Ridge D2M Virtual Conference

At the recent Hawk Ridge D2M Virtual Conference, experts from EMA Design Automation and Hawk Ridge Systems came together to unpack a challenge that nearly every product development team faces today: how to efficiently connect mechanical and electrical design workflows.

The session, led by Chris Banton, VP of Marketing at EMA Design Automation, and Rony Godoy, Engineering Manager at Hawk Ridge Systems, explored the growing overlap between MCAD and ECAD, the pitfalls teams encounter when these domains stay siloed, and new collaborative workflows enabled by the partnership between Cadence and SOLIDWORKS.

Below is a recap of the major insights and demonstrations from the event.

Why MCAD–ECAD Collaboration Matters More Than Ever

Modern products such as consumer electronics, automotive systems and IoT devices, combine electronics, mechanical structures, firmware, and user interfaces into one integrated system. And critically, these workstreams are no longer sequential. Mechanical and electrical design happens in parallel, creating significant pressure for teams to stay aligned. With over 58% of teams experiencing MCAD-ECAD integration issues, which result in unexpected design changes, project delays, or in worst case scenarios product failure it is clear, collaboration isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s essential for meeting timelines, budgets, and reliability targets.

ECAD and MCAD Needs—and What’s Often Missing

To frame the collaboration problem, let’s break down what MCAD and ECAD teams each care about most during the product development process when it comes to multi-disciplinary integration.

What MCAD Teams Need

What ECAD Teams Need

Without accurate data, both teams wind up making decisions with incomplete or outdated information—resulting in redesigns, late discoveries, or expensive re-spins; however, many teams face roadblocks that make it difficult to communicate the critical information between disciplines with traditional methods.

The Collaboration Roadblocks During Product Development

When MCAD and ECAD teams operate with disconnected tools or manual workflows, there can be several recurring issues:

1. Slow and Inefficient Data Exchange

Teams often rely on STEP files, email attachments, or shared folders to exchange data. With these methods, large files take time to export, import, repair, and re-associate, leading to infrequent updates and stale data.

2. Loss of Design Intelligence

Simplified shapes (like generic boxes) speed up CAD imports but strip away the detail needed for accurate simulation, thermal analysis, or interference checks.

3. Constant Recreation of Geometry

When data isn’t associatively linked, every small change requires rework—redrawing outlines, redefining heights, repositioning parts, and rechecking clearances. This can lead to inconsistencies between MCAD and ECAD and increase the possibility of errors.

4. Lack of Change Tracking

With traditional multi-disciplinary communication methods, teams often have no way of tracking changes and revisions. It becomes difficult to track vital information such as:

• Who changed the board outline?
• Why was this connector moved?
• When did changes occur throughout the design process?
• What is the latest revision?

Without traceable change history, knowledge gaps form quickly.

To eliminate these roadblocks, ECAD and MCAD teams must establish intelligent, bi-directional collaboration within their respective CAD tools.

The Solution: Intelligent, Native, Bi-Directional CAD Collaboration

Two powerful (and free) integrations have been developed through the partnership between Cadence and Dassault, enabling seamless collaboration between OrCAD X and/or Allegro X and SOLIDWORKS: MCADX and CircuitWorks.

“No more outdated data or manual rework. Just real-time visibility of any updates or changes that are happening between both teams.”

Rony Godoy, Hawk Ridge Systems

While MCADX and CircuitWorks have some differences in features and abilities both enhance the flow between MCAD and ECAD teams, enabling seamless integration with:

• Native, incremental data exchange (no more full STEP round-trips)
• Bi-directional communication with accept/reject workflows
• Automatic associativity between models and components
• Change tracking with comments and history
• High-fidelity 3D model exchange for accurate mechanical validation
• In-context decision making right inside each designer’s CAD environment

With MCADX and CircuitWorks, both ECAD and MCAD teams can work with their own data in their native environments while seeing real-time updates.

A Look at the Workflow: Live Demo Highlights

The webinar included two powerful demonstrations.

Demo 1: PCB and Enclosure Collaboration

1. ECAD exports the board (with component models, outlines, and metadata) directly from OrCAD X.
2. SolidWorks imports the design, automatically flagging missing models and loading the assembly with full intelligence.
3. Mechanical verification and modifications—such as aligning a joystick or adjusting mounting holes—are made directly in SOLIDWORKS.
4. Changes are sent back to ECAD, complete with designer comments.
5. ECAD users review changes, accept or reject them, and visualize the updated assembly in 3D.

The result? A process that once required long meetings, massive files, and hours of rework now takes minutes.

Demo 2: Rigid–Flex Collaboration (A Game Changer)

One of the most advanced additions—arriving with recent Cadence and SolidWorks releases of MCADX—is full rigid–flex support.

With this update, the critical elements of rigid-flex designs such as flex regions, bend lines, and bend angles can be communicated from the electrical designs to SOLIDWORKS. SOLIDWORKS now imports all of that intelligence natively allowing mechanical teams to:

• Visualize flex boards in their actual bent state
• Animate bends to detect interference during the folding motion
• Run accurate thermal, airflow, or structural simulations
• Integrate the flex assembly directly into broader product designs

Before this update, MCAD engineers often had to recreate flex behavior manually—a time-consuming and error-prone process. The new workflow eliminates that bottleneck entirely.

Final Thoughts: Better Collaboration Leads to Better Products

“When engineers have complete, accurate, real-time information, they make the right decisions.”

Chris Banton, EMA Design Automation

The partnership between EMA Design Automation and Hawk Ridge Systems helps teams finally bridge the long-standing ECAD–MCAD divide by enabling communication between OrCAD X or Allegro X and SOLIDWORKS. With native tool integration, intelligent data, and incremental synchronization, product teams can reduce errors, shorten development cycles, and deliver higher-performing products.

If your team is still emailing STEP files or wrestling with outdated workflows, now is the time to explore more modern collaboration tools and transform how your electrical and mechanical teams bring ideas to life. Watch the webinar here to learn more about how MCADX and CircuitWorks can improve your ECAD-MCAD design flow.

Ready to get started and streamline your ECAD-MCAD design process?

ECAD USERS: MCADX is included in OrCAD X. Get started with step-by- step instructions. Don’t have OrCAD X? Request your upgrade to OrCAD X here.

MCAD USERS: For SOLIDWORKS users, download the free MCAD X plugin here. Additionally, contact Hawk Ridge Systems for more information on CircuitWorks which is now included in all tiers of SOLIDWORKS.