It's time to revisit EDAOctober 2006Somewhat ashamed of my neglect of you electronics designers, I thought it high time we took a look at what the electronic design automation (EDA) software market has to offer for PCB designers I last looked at software for PCB design about 20 months ago, back in February 2005. That's a long time in software development terms, so let's take a look at what the industry has come up with in the meantime.
The latest release of Easy-PC, a professional level product supported in the UK by Adept Scientific (http://easypc.adeptscience.co.uk), offers a lot of high-end features that you'd expect to find in much higher priced products. It costs just £247 (ex-VAT) for the 1,000 pin version; there's a 2,000 pin version for £347 and unlimited pins for £447. Easy-PC is an integrated schematic editing/PCB layout program with a free auto-router thrown in. Given this price/feature combination, the package is aimed at companies that need to design and manufacture the occasional board to appropriate standards, rather than at professional board design houses.
The latter group of companies might be more disposed towards products such as Cadence's (www.cadence.com) OrCAD. New features and technologies within this environment for professional PCB designers address issues from schematic entry and circuit analysis to layout. This includes a useful tool called OrCAD Signal Explorer, which carries out signal integrity analysis and validation as the design progresses, avoiding unnecessary re-work and laboratory de-bugging procedures and thus speeding time-to-market.
Other useful features are OrCAD's PSpice Magnetic Parts Editor, which provides rapid definition and creation of simulation models for transformers and other magnetic devices, and the OrCAD Capture schematic entry tool, which now includes an automated split-part approach to managing large pin-count devices.
Incidentally, Mentor Graphics (www.mentor.com) is currently offering translators that enable migration of Protel, P-CAD and OrCAD designs and libraries to its PADS PCB design environment, should you want to take advantage of the latter's rich functionality. PADs is a fully integrated suite of PCB design tools that take you through the processes of logic and system design through physical layout and routing to system simulation and verification. Mentor claims that you can use PADS to handle anything from basic designs to complex, high-speed applications. However, if your design task involves a large board containing a large number of multi-pin components, then Mentor's XtremeAR product will enable simultaneous execution of auto-routing on up to 15 processors, cutting routing times from days to hours!
Altium (www.altium.com) describes its latest Designer 6.3 product as a 'unified electronic product development solution' that eases the transition from board or embedded system design to "super systems designer". And, as seems to be customary in this industry, there are translators that allow you to migrate legacy designs from PADS and OrCAD into the Designer 6.3 environment, plus a new STEP export for ECAD to MCAD data exchange. Altium Designer 6.3 features a new copper pour (polygon) management system, enhanced support for multi-track editing, support for both plated and non-plated slotted holes in PCB pads, and speedier polygon connectivity.
With RoHS now very much influencing electronic product design, it is heartening to see that companies like Zuken (www.cadstarworld.com) are embracing the regulations in new versions of their PCB design software. CADSTAR version 8.0 covers new design processes and fabrication techniques such as lead-free soldering, and supports electrical connections using jumper technology. Users can add these jumpers on the fly, like a normal via. Also supported are rounded rectangle pads, which improve the process of lead-free soldering. This new version also includes an accurate FEM field solver that identifies frequency-dependent losses and the proximity effects on strong couplings.
Dr Know's recommended download is the Easy-PC 10 for Windows demo -
download yours today:
http://www.adeptscience.co.uk/download/dlddsp/5928/0/All/Easy-PC+10+for+Windows+Demo+Software.html
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