Author Archives: Indesign

Indesign, LLC, a nationally recognized engineering design firm specializing in electronic product development, announced the recent incorporation of the ANSYS Finite Element Analysis software program for product development. ANSYS stress analysis software program allows Indesign engineers to model the mechanical stress levels in a part. The ANSYS program uses a finite element analysis process, where the part is divided into thousands of small elements and then the stress level is derived for each element. All of these stress levels can be modeled from CAD geometry so no physical part is needed for the testing. These advanced analysis capabilities allow Indesign engineers to more accurately predict how parts will react when the design loads are applied. Indesign engineers use ANSYS' industry leading software in the early stages of a project to uncover potential issues with the parts. Finding these potential issues early in the process allows them to be corrected before any physical models are produced. This allows Indesign to produce better prototypes in addition to decreasing the schedule and cost of a design. The addition of the ANSYS software package allows Indesign to continue providing the highest quality designs to their customers. ANSYS also works well for investigating issues with existing parts. Indesign engineers may work with a client's in-house engineers to analyze and plot the stresses in the sensitive areas of an existing part. The visual identification of the stresses on a 3D part can highlight regions of high stress that may not be immediately intuitive. Indesign engineers will also work with a client's in-house engineers to determine a design solution for the problems. This joint collaboration allows a client's engineering team to make use of the ANSYS software without incurring the cost of bringing it in house. Indesign, dedicated to and the continued success of its clients, offers state of the art design and development through innovative concepts and design of comprehensive engineering design services for electronic products and systems. These services include mechanical design, electrical circuit design, RF, software/firmware design, testing/validation services, project management and a host of other services dedicated to the development of electronic products and solutions.

Indianapolis-based engineering firm, Indesign, LLC, was named as one of the 2010 Best Places to Work in Indiana at an awards ceremony coordinated by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and Best Companies Group. Indesign was ranked #2 in the small to medium sized company category. This statewide awards program was designed to identify, recognize and honor the best places of employment in Indiana, benefiting the state's economy, its workforce and businesses. Companies with strong workplace practices - rooted in respect, teamwork and good communication - were recognized with this program. The awards program was created in 2006 and is a project of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, BizVoice, Inside INdiana Business, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Best Companies Group. Companies from across the state entered the two-part process to determine the Best Places to Work in Indiana. The first part consisted of evaluating each nominated company's workplace policies, practices, and demographics. The second part consisted of an employee survey to measure the employee experience. Results from the two part process determined the top companies and the final ranking. Best Companies Group managed the overall registration and survey process in Indiana and also analyzed the data and used their expertise to determine the final rankings. The 2010 Best Places to Work in Indiana list is made up of 28 companies in the small/medium-sized list (25-249 employees in the United States) and 42 companies in the large-sized list (250+ employees in the United States). About Best Places to Work in Indiana For more information on the Best Places to Work in Indiana program, visit www.BestPlacestoWorkIN.com or contact Jackie Miller at 877-455-2159.

Indesign, LLC, a nationally recognized engineering design firm specializing in electronic product development, has announced the addition of the Cadence Allegro PCB design tool. Indesign recently added Cadence Allegro to its existing PCB design tools. In the world of electronics, designs are being driven by increasingly complex physical and electrical constraints, densely packed components and faster high-speed circuits. The Allegro tools allow the printed circuit board (PCB) ECAD designer at Indesign to easily define, manage and validate physical/spacing constraints especially for critical high-speed signals. This helps ensure the final PCB design meets performance, manufacturing and test specifications goals. The need for multiple PCB spins is reduced or eliminated altogether because the original design meets all the constraints imposed by the utilized technologies. With Indesign's addition of the Cadence Allegro tool, the design of high-speed and highly constrained PCB layouts is accelerated. Cadence Allegro's Constraint Manager enables the designer to enter the physical, electrical and timing constraints, a must for high-speed designs that utilize technologies such as DDR2/3, gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, PCI Express, LVDS, HDMI 2.0, SATA 2/3 and others. When controlled impedances, differential pairs and matched trace lengths (Delay Tuning trombones and Accordions) are needed, the Allegro Constraint Manager can be easily invoked and managed to ensure the design meets those requirements reliably, consistently and in the very first spin of the layout. The New Capabilities in Printed Circuit Board design: Length, parallelism, and differential pair rule support Real-time DRC and routing of differential pair and length rules Interactive delay tuning Design for Assembly rule checking Automatic Test prep Automatic line width adjustment for impedance rules Via array/shielding Regional design constraint rules Width and clearance rules by layer Blind and buried vias The addition of Cadence Allegro tools enables Indesign's PCB designers to take full advantage of new capabilities. Allegro provides enhanced benefits in PCB design, from the simplest boards through cutting-edge board designs requiring high component densities, multiple layers, very high-speed routing, differential traces, controlled impedances, and blind and buried vias. Allegro's performance combined with Indesign's highly experienced EE and ECAD staff dramatically increases your design success rate. Indesign, dedicated to the continued success of its clients, offers state-of-the-art design and development through innovative concepts and design of comprehensive engineering design services for embedded electronic products and systems. These services include electrical circuit design, RF, software/firmware design, mechanical design, testing/validation services, project management and a host of other services dedicated to the development of electronic products and solutions.

Indesign, LLC, a nationally recognized engineering design firm specializing in electronic product development was featured in the October 2009 issue of R&D magazine. The content below was taken from the article: "Understanding Contract Labs", By Lindsay Hock, Managing Editor Inside Electronic/Software Development Labs Like materials testing labs, Indesign LLC, Indianapolis, IN, an electronics development and engineering services lab, is no stranger to following strict standards and requirements. Indesign LLC is an "ISO 9001 certified development house. We have detailed design and development processes for each of our design disciplines," says Jerry Gotway, president and CEO of Indesign LLC. The services Indesign offers range from full product development design, product design engineering, creating prototypes, test engineering services, and more. Indesign can help any company with any of their electronic and software development needs. Gotway says, "Where we come into the development process varies. We prefer to be involved in the very front end of product development. Many clients that we serve have already done all the product concept work and have developed a detailed set of requirements or specs." With the requirements and specs already laid out, Indesign will do the detailed design work following the specs. From medical devices, to mechanical products, to electrical products, all testing gets back to the set of requirements the company provides. With the typical development process starting at requirements, then heading into architecture, then schematics, the PCB layout stage, procuring parts and building PCB assemblies, testing the design, and then releasing their prototype to the factory, Indesign has the proper equipment to aid in the development. Indesign has equipment that ranges from digital scopes and spectrum analyzers to environmental chambers for temperature and humidity testing. Gotway says, "As we go through the design process, and we start building prototypes, we perform validation testing to verify that the prototypes have met all the requirements the company has stipulated." The testing equipment allows Indesign to meet those requirements and verify the methods used are within the standards. Because Indesign's focus is helping companies design and develop electrical, mechanical, and software products, a challenge they sometimes face, according to Gotway, is "that Indesign is designing or developing something that does not exist previously." And, since they are creating a new product, there is always uncertainty of how each component will come together. "One of the challenges is being able to deal with the unexpected when creating something new," says Gotway. Despite any unexpected event, the lab must stick to a tight schedule and stay on it. According to Gotway, "we must be able to quickly address any issue that comes up." Gotway has observed many trends within the electronics development. "Over the past several years a larger percentage of our new product designs have evolved from wired to wireless designs," he says. Because users no longer want to be "tethered with a wire" when using their electronic products, Indesign has used many standard wireless protocols in their product designs. Within software, Gotway has seen a lot of Linux being used for embedded software designs. Also within electronics, he has seen new developments in battery technology and a trend to go low power. "Most portable products are often limited based on the available battery life. This has created new developments in battery technology, as well as low power circuit components and circuit design," says Gotway. To read the entire article click on this link: Understanding Contract Labs

Indesign, LLC, a nationally recognized engineering design firm specializing in electronic product development, has announced an enhanced focus on embedded Linux development. Indesign has recently added several software engineers with strong embedded Linux backgrounds to augment its existing Linux design capabilities. These staff additions will allow Indesign to develop more products utilizing multimedia, satellite, VoIP, and wireless technologies with Linux based operating systems. Indesign has specialists who can create custom Linux drivers and low-level board support packages. Engineers are available to architect and implement a range of interfaces from headless to high-end graphical displays. Indesign maintains relationships with many major semiconductor companies, and can leverage these relationships to ensure product success. Indesign's expertise and knowledge in designing Linux compatible hardware, building prototypes, utilizing existing open source software, and creating custom Linux applications allows companies to bring their products to market quickly, on-budget, and on-schedule. Indesign, dedicated to and the continued success of its clients, offers state of the art design and development through innovative concepts and design of comprehensive engineering design services for embedded electronic products and systems. These services include electrical circuit design, RF, software/firmware design, mechanical design, testing/validation services, project management and a host of other services dedicated to the development of electronic products and solutions.

Indesign, LLC, an electronic product design engineering services company located in Indianapolis, recently received certification for compliance of its Quality Management System with the updated ISO 9001:2008 standard. Compliance was established through a successful certification audit carried out by SGS. Indesign has been certified to earlier versions of the ISO 9001 standard since 1999. Indesign's Quality Management System was established to focus on client requirements for design documentation and product prototypes, as well as to support clients' internal quality management processes for product design and development. "Indesign is very pleased to obtain certification to the latest ISO 9001 standard", says Indesign CEO and President Jerry Gotway. "This ISO certification is a reflection of our company's strong commitment to quality, process improvement, and client satisfaction." About SGS SGS is the world's leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognised as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 55,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 1,000 offices and laboratories around the world.

Indianapolis-based engineering firm, Indesign, LLC, was recently designated as an Elite Design House within the Texas Instruments Developer and Design House Network. This network is an elite group of highly skilled companies that offer system-level design and product design services. For more information go to the link below: www.TIDesignHouse.com

Indianapolis-based engineering firm, Indesign, LLC, was the electronic design and development firm for personal GPS device ECCOTM for IDC Design Corporation - CES Innovations award winner - 2009. To find out more about the winning design for ECCO™ visit the websites below: CES - http://www.cesweb.org/awards/innovations/2009honorees.asp?category=905093 CES - http://www.cesweb.org/awards/innovations/2009honorees.asp?category=905099 PC Magazine - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338868,00.asp IDC Website - http://www.idcgps.com/ To register for the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009, visit www.cesweb.org.

Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) and electronic engineering design services firm, Indesign, LLC, announced today the availability of a Computer-On-Module (COM) reference platform for use in products designed by Indesign engineers for their clients. The COM platform is based on the Atmel AT91SAM9260 processor that runs the ARM926EJ-S core at 200MHz. It will enable Indesign engineers to implement designs for their customers more quickly and at lower development costs. Targeted applications include electronic products with no user interface requiring significant processing capability and supporting a variety of interface peripherals including Ethernet, USB, I2S audio and USARTs. These applications take advantage of the high internal data bandwidth that is one of the distinguishing features of the AT91SAM9260, enabling it to simultaneously process and transmit/receive large quantities of data. The COM reference platform, in a mini-PCI physical form factor, contains 3.3V and 1.8V power supplies for the processor and memories. With the addition of a 1.0V power supply, the board also supports the 400MHz Atmel AT91SAM9G20 for double processing power. The use of 3.3V on the IO pins is ideally suited for industrial type markets where the majority of devices still operate at 3V or higher. The memory interface can be supplied with lower voltages down to 1.8V to enable use of lower cost and lower power memories more widely available. Indesign has adapted the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 board support package with the technical support of Adeneo for the COM with plans to support embedded Linux . Indesign also offers consultancy services for ARM -based designs. Memories and Peripherals. The COM reference platform includes on-board memory of 64MB mobile SDRAM, up to 128MB NAND Flash, and up to 8MB DataFlash for bootloader and program storage, and has the option of booting from DataFlash or NAND Flash. In addition, the reference platform includes the following on-board peripherals: 10/100Mb Ethernet MAC with MII or RMII interface, 4 UART ports (1 full feature, 3 four-wire, IrDA), 2 two-wire UARTs, 2 SPI ports each with 4 chip selects, I2S audio, 2 USB 2.0 Full Speed Host ports, 1 USB 2.0 device port, four 10-bit A/D inputs with on board 3.0V reference, 1 SD card interface, 1 Two-wire (I2C) interface, watch dog timer, a real time counter, and up to 77 general purpose I/Os. About Atmel Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets.

This article was excerpted from the local Chamber of Commerce. Anne Walz, Human Resource Associate with Indesign didn't realize how easy it would be to launch a corporate wellness program until it began nearly 4 weeks ago. She was pleased to see that of their 60 employees, 85% of the company signed up to participate. Their success could be because their particular program sounds remarkably easy to implement and not intimidating. Indesign calls the first program challenge "Summer Strides," and the goal is for employees to monitor their steps each day toward a weekly goal. Participants were randomly divided into teams and scores are kept by determining a team average per day. "We've actually had a team do 15,000 steps in a day," Anne said. (The program has shown that there are some very competitive people working at the company.) To begin, Indesign purchased pedometers for participants, not an easy task since most stores don't carry the large number of pedometers needed for all of the employees who signed up. Employees were given an activity conversion chart so they can convert other activity into steps. "Spinning (indoor cycling) is approximately 250 steps per minute for a man," said John Sawyer, program participant and software engineer with the company. "For a 45 minute class, that's a lot of steps," he added. Each challenge is 4 1/2 weeks in length, and the company is nearly finished with their first challenge. Once it's over, Anne will re-team all participants, placing the highest achievers in different teams to make things more fair. As each challenge is finished, new and more aggressive goals are set for the participants. The program works because it encourages camaraderie among the employees and encourages them to get moving more. "We've got employees actually going out in groups over their lunch hour and walking around the Loop," said Kathy Rima, Executive Vice President. Kathy also said that they did the program to ultimately reduce health care costs, as companies who implement wellness programs over a period of time are considered to be more "well" by insurance companies. Before getting started, Anne surveyed the employees to learn what was most important to them. What they learned was telling of the age of their group, which is largely in their 40's and 50's. Only twenty percent of employees fall in their 20's. Employees cited as their top five interests: learning small steps for increased fitness, men's health issues, heart disease prevention, vitamin facts and information, and tips for increasing physical activity. Indesign is a fit company in the business sense as well. The company develops all kinds of electrical products for companies such as Roche, Thompson, and Microsoft. And, they stay busy doing it, working on 60 - 70 projects per year. Thirty-four people who came from Bell Labs formed Indesign in late '96 and opened their doors in February '97. The company was located at Patriot's Place on Caito Drive until their move into their new building in the fall of 2001. Based on Indesign's proven track record over the past four years, they anticipate a 10% growth in personnel each year. "What we do is fun for engineers," Kathy said. They hire software, electrical, mechanical and test engineers and recruit heavily at Purdue and Rose Hulman. "Recruiting is easy because once engineering students see what we develop, they get excited about working with us because what we do is exactly what engineers like to do."