Design and Technology
The evolution of DesignSpark serves the needs of engineers with enhanced and personalised design resources
Mike Bray, vice president of innovation and DesignSpark at RS, discusses the next phase in the lifecycle of DesignSpark, and why the move to a multi-tiered subscription model can benefit all its members in the fast-growing engineering community
F Vision
Over the past 12 months, RS embarked upon some extensive market research across the DesignSpark user base to better understand how its members – now numbering more than one million engineers and designers worldwide – use the platform and what more could be done to help them solve their design and engineering problems and to be able to move faster and be more agile. It became clear to us that DesignSpark needed to evolve to offer different levels of capabilities and resources to a highly diverse engineering universe, in terms of requirements – from students and hobbyists to super makers to professional design engineers in companies of all sizes and industries.
Earlier this year, RS announced a new vision for DesignSpark and the start of
42 May 2023
or some time now, RS has been delivering free design tools for engineers in the electronics industry via the DesignSpark platform. Since its inception more than a decade ago, DesignSpark has offered a suite of design tools, which currently includes DesignSpark Mechanical and DesignSpark PCB. These are supplemented by comprehensive 2D/3D and electronics part libraries, and a host of design resources such as technology articles, projects, community forums and support via its fast growing and extensive community of engineers. But nothing stands still in our industry with ever increasing cost and time pressures of getting products to market – and DesignSpark also needs to evolve to serve its members in new ways and even better than before.
the next phase in its lifecycle. The new DesignSpark 2.0 both retains at its heart a free experience as well as introducing a new subscription-based model. Our membership now has three levels, respectively called: ‘Explorer’, ‘Creator’ and ‘Engineer’. Our belief is that this approach provides members with an enhanced and increasingly personalised experience and enables them to select their own level of access, according to their requirements for design tools and resources, offering individuals and businesses a solution that puts them in control of what and when they need to use a higher level of capability.
Components in Electronics
Explorer
Looking at the options in more detail, Explorer is the entirely free version of the platform, which is most likely to suit students, makers, and designers. It delivers a comprehensive suite of tools with extensive capabilities and enables members to retain the same community access, tools and design resources that they have always enjoyed – completely free – enabling them to quickly make the leap from concept to prototype. Explorer includes DesignSpark PCB, the award-winning rapid-prototyping tool for circuit design. This allows the creation
of schematics, transfer to a PCB layout and preparation for production and all backed by pre-built component libraries and tools to ensure error-free PCBs. Then there’s DesignSpark Mechanical, a direct modeller that requires no prior experience with 3D CAD software and enables users to freely create and modify geometry.
Explorer level members also have access to more than 100 million 3D models and 2D symbols for circuit design, and the ability to perform searches on one billion parts, accessing data sheets and part lifecycle status
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