Designer softwares and their reliability

[mack_30]

While searching for components on TI or any other such big suppliers, I notice that there is a trend that most of them provide "Full product design" tools, wherein you can simply input your requirement and then they list of all possible solutions along with schematic, BOM, PCB designs, BOM and even supplier/distributors list.

While designing a couple of products I wonder if I can directly use them and how reliable it is?
For eg: can I directly use the SMPS design provided by these SW's.

To list a few of the design tools : http://www.ti.com/design-resources/design-tools-simulation/webench-power-designer.html, Power Integrations "PIXls Designer 10.2" and "PI Expert Suite 10.2".

Please provide your 2cents on the same.

[Jeroen3]

Those tools match your specification with a collection of application example circuits. You may end up with a circuit that is on the edge of what it can do when given your specs. Which means that it may not work properly when assembled with real world parts or less ideal layout.

So use directly, yes. But you still need to test and validate the design.
If you want plug&play circuits you should go to traco power or recom.

[EEEnthusiast]

I had worked at TI for quite a few years and I can comment on some of the webench designs. The specifications given by the user is used to arrive at the design using some optimisation and component iteration. Most of the time it works well as the base design is already validated by TI and the webench uses real world component models and not just approximations.

However if your requirements are near the edge of the design specs, then you may need to validate again.