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I agree with you about problems in system evolution. We both see this in our work. And about that Ariane incident, you're also right. More detail here: https://

I agree with you about problems in system evolution. We both see this in our work. And about that Ariane incident, you're also right. More detail here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_%28spacecraft%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_%28spacecraft%29. For anyone interested, I can recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Space-Systems-Failures-Satellites-Exploration/dp/0387215190 http://www.amazon.com/Space-Systems-Failures-Satellites-Expl... Your second paragraph sounds like a call for literate engineering, akin to Knuth's literate programming. I like this idea. About CAD tools for aerospace, it really depends on what CAD tools you use. Things like Pro/E and Solidworks explicitly allow you to put in specifications and tolerances, and also for interference checking and the like. For electrical design, there are tools that allow you to put in electrical requirements and run simulations on your design files to test against those requirements. So there are some ways of catching problems ahead of production. Now, those tools aren't available to everyone. So I'm on job #3 in this industry. Job #1 had me doing all my electrical designs in AutoCAD LT. No checking or simulations there (can't even generate a bill of materials with this either)! All we had was a library of symbols that one of the engineers had made. Job #2 had me using Cadence ORCAD, but without any of the add-ons that made it useful (could generate a BOM, but couldn't customize it, which meant that I was assigned to create an Excel macro to customize the BOM to meet our specific stock-keeping system's requirements). Job #3, I have nothing because all the vast majority of the electrical designs are done somewhere else (they use CATIA). Whenever I actually do some design work, I'm reduced to taking screenshots of relevant areas in other schematic PDFs, then stitching them together in MS Paint, and then pasting those into a Powerpoint template. I wish I were kidding. But with job #3 most of my time is spent on other things besides pushing dots, like testing and evaluating upgrades to our embedded systems (this kind of thing is one reason why I spend time here).

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Wow, that's ridiculous and sounds painful! Again, I'm not a hardware guy, but I've absorbed a lot of knowledge and wisdom of it over past year trying to improve CPU designs and eliminate subversion possibilities. Studied their flows, synthesis, mask reduction, etc. Anyway, what your describing sounds behind even the free stuff. So, here's an amateur's attempt to help you out a bit with open-source alternatives: gEDA's 10+ tools to assist the process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDA KiCad is similar w/ bill of materials and artwork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiCad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiCad QUICS for simplified usage in schematic capture & simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quite_Universal_Circuit_Simulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quite_Universal_Circuit_Simula... Magic for those wanting old school (a recent SOC used it) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_%28software%29 You get used to something like gEDA or KiCAD then you can use it (even on your laptop) whenever the work tools suck. Not sure if it will help you since I understand just enough to know the tools exist and what they do but nothing further. And if you get bored with hand-made circuits, look up Qflow: from behavioral synthesis down to detail routing all in open source. Handles much of opencores.org's Verilog. Have fun with that and please tell me if any of the CAD tools are solid replacements for commercial use in your field.
- engi_nerd 11y ago
  I do have a laptop at work that I can use to mess around with. I can't work on any classified materials on it (but I don't deal with that much on the design side). I will experiment with these tools when I get some time. I doubt if you'll see a reply to this thread by then, though. Perhaps we can find another way to communicate.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
Seems every variation of my name and what it represent are taken on all major email providers. Hard finding one that represents strong INFOSEC, lay people understand, easy enough to spell, and sounds cool. Then, I had an idea. Just click on my name to see my new email for security work.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Wow, that's ridiculous and sounds painful! Again, I'm not a hardware guy, but I've absorbed a lot of knowledge and wisdom of it over past year trying to improve CPU designs and eliminate subversion possibilities. Studied their flows, synthesis, mask reduction, etc. Anyway, what your describing sounds behind even the free stuff. So, here's an amateur's attempt to help you out a bit with open-source alternatives: gEDA's 10+ tools to assist the process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDA KiCad is similar w/ bill of materials and artwork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiCad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiCad QUICS for simplified usage in schematic capture & simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quite_Universal_Circuit_Simulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quite_Universal_Circuit_Simula... Magic for those wanting old school (a recent SOC used it) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_%28software%29 You get used to something like gEDA or KiCAD then you can use it (even on your laptop) whenever the work tools suck. Not sure if it will help you since I understand just enough to know the tools exist and what they do but nothing further. And if you get bored with hand-made circuits, look up Qflow: from behavioral synthesis down to detail routing all in open source. Handles much of opencores.org's Verilog. Have fun with that and please tell me if any of the CAD tools are solid replacements for commercial use in your field.

engi_nerd 11y ago
I do have a laptop at work that I can use to mess around with. I can't work on any classified materials on it (but I don't deal with that much on the design side). I will experiment with these tools when I get some time. I doubt if you'll see a reply to this thread by then, though. Perhaps we can find another way to communicate.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Seems every variation of my name and what it represent are taken on all major email providers. Hard finding one that represents strong INFOSEC, lay people understand, easy enough to spell, and sounds cool. Then, I had an idea. Just click on my name to see my new email for security work.