| Random thoughts. I have a feeling that very few hardware projects have a bunch of people working on the same schematic. I have personally never experienced that in the context of a team project. What might happens is that each engineer works on a board and the interface between boards is defined by the team. I have done systems with 15 to 20 PCB's interconnected through custom backplanes this way. Modern EDA tools have ways to save portions of schematics to a library of reusable designs. This could be one vector for collaboration if, for example, you have someone who is an expert in SMPS (Switch Mode Power Supply) design doing all your power supply designs. There is no need for this person to actively modify an ongoing design, all you need is a verified and tested schematic unit you can just plop down and move on. I think a key difference in hardware is that you cannot constantly be engaged in modifying the schematic. These are things that become real physical instantiations at a given point in time. And so, the concept of using software tools isn't necessarily applicable. You most definitely do not want someone changing a schematic after it has been released to production. Then you have to step back and look at things at a system level. The schematic is the least important part of the process. Imagine something like an industrial CNC machine, the real deal, a $100K machine that has to work 24/7 and not kill anyone. This machine likely has dozens of PCB's, wiring diagrams, mechanical components that need to be machined, injection molded, made from sheet metal, hoses, valves, sensors, etc. The schematic, is the least of the problems we come across when designing such systems. It simply isn't a pain point. And there is very little need to iterate like we might in the software domain. In fact, that could be very dangerous, because, at a minimum, you can't just recompile your way out of a mistake. Sorry if I sound negative about this. That isn't my intent. This is just my opinion based on decades of doing electronics at every level. I have, BTW, used software to generate netlists for very specific designs. In one case it was an array of hundreds of sensors (the same sensor) on a PCB. I just wrote a Python program to generate the netlist. That's a very specific case where a schematic doesn't offer a great deal of value. In this case a simple PDF documenting the board interface and how the sensors were connected (a matrix) was enough. |
I'll add: I HAVE worked on schematic designs with 10-20 people working on an overall schematic design at the same time. Usually one or more engineers own some sub-section of the design ; i.e. for a mobile device, one or a few people own the "power" part of the schematic, the camera team owns the camera portion(s) of the schematic, etc.
Mentor (DxDesigner / Design Capture) and Cadence (Concept) support this flow, but with the oddly more popular but OrCad this can be a nightmare.