Quantum CAD - Electronic and PCB Design Blog

Mentor buys PCB software firm Valor Computerised systems

Mentor graphics has bought Israeli PCB software firm Valor Computerised Systems.

Under the terms of the agreement, Valor shareholders will receive a combination of Mentor common shares and cash for aggregate consideration of approximately $82m, equating to approximately $4.60 per Valor share.

Subject to satisfaction of regularity requirements and approval of Valor shareholders, as well as certain closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close during the first calendar quarter of 2010, after which Valor will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mentor.

Blog by Gary Price

Tackle Time to Market challenge head on - With CADSTAR Schematic Free Download

Zuken recognizes that time to market is a critical factor in the day to day work of design teams within the product development process.  To support this the development team for CADSTAR, Zuken’s powerful PCB design solution, is inviting design engineers to experience the latest CADSTAR Schematic Design Tool and Library Editor as a free download for a limited period of time, commencing January 5, 2009 until 31 March 2009.  This unlimited and non expiring copy of CADSTAR 11 Schematic Design Tool will allow the whole design team to explore the benefits of CADSTAR’s integrated design flow opportunities.

Customers advise the designs themselves are becoming more and more complex, to the extent that passing on critical design information between the members of the design team, each often using individual design tools, can be time consuming and allows design errors.

What's New in CADSTAR 11

CADSTAR 11, New Enhancements

Introducing CADSTAR 11, Zuken’s PCB design revolution

Latest Free Version of CADSTAR Express

Zuken has released the latest revision of the free sample download of CADSTAR 10.0--CADSTAR Express. This fully operational version of Zuken’s easy to use and ready to use powerful desktop PCB design solution includes all the latest features of CADSTAR 10.0, with a limit of 300 pins and 50 components.

Users downloading this tool from Quantum EDS website can quickly get a feel for the major advancements in ease of use and reverse engineering featured in version 10.0. The back annotation function for example, now makes file transfer from PCB into schematic a much smoother process, assisting in the efficient management of engineering change orders that are particularly associated with high-speed designs.

Earlier this year CADSTAR Express took second place in E&E’s (Elektronik & Entwicklung) awards under the Design Tools and Software category; based on the solution’s ease of use and compatibility with other design/manufacturing software systems.

To get the most out of CADSTAR Express, Zuken has compiled a Do-It-Yourself Booklet, created to guide the user step-by-step through the solution using design examples.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact your local Quantum EDS to find out more about the unlimited versions of CADSTAR solutions.

SDS: Software defined silicon

For many years computer software has played a major contributory role in embedded system design. The result has inhibited a closer interaction between hardware designers and software programmers.

In recent years it seemed that a micro-chip was just a custom device that implemented all of its hardware functionality set during manufacture, which was precisely that, now it seems to be something of the past with new innovations of electronic fundamentals coming into play.

The physical implantation of an SDS device is based on a multi-core array of processors. Therefore such a structure can be seen as implementing a large number of sequential processes to work simultaneously. These processes communicate by message passing sort from software programmers, where the array can be configured to execute information efficiently.

The I/O (Input/Output) processing functions are of particular importance in the SDS structure. It is these processes which allow the entire system to be translated into software images that perform the relative operations it’s required, this is where SDS differs from traditional embedded processors.

To conclude this new form of interaction between hardware and software is undoubtedly the way forward in the foreseeable future. With all aspects of the device delivering embedded flexibility within the devices, it is a huge step forward in the world of electronic design

CADSTAR MIGRATION TO CADENCE ALLEGRO

I had this exact problem, the other day, to migrate a Cadstar design into Cadence Allegro, we thought a possible migration route might be through OrCAD Layout, but the problem is once you have a cadstar.pcb file you cannot back migrate this cadstar file to an older version i.e. (DOS .cdi) We spoke to Zuken about this and this was pretty much their answer, so looks like we cannot use OrCAD Layout as a migration route for modern cadstar files. The migration route we are considering is to reverse engineer the cadstar file into Allegro. We also spoke to Cadence about this, they have internal translators which take cadstar.pcb files to Allegro, but this would be done under their serives division and might be costly. So you pay your money and take your choice whether to pay Cadence or reverse engineer the PCB.

Cadence Allegro PCB Design

Here at Quantum CAD we use just about every type of PCB design software there is on the market, such as Cadence Allegro/Orcad layout, Mentor Expedition/Pads, Zuken CR5000/Cadstar, Visula and Altium Designer/Protel.

However, my personal experience and expertise lay with Cadence Allegro and to a slightly lesser extent Mentor Pads, I also have considerable experience with OrCAD Layout. I find each of the mentioned packages has their pros and cons, and are best suited for different design tasks, back a few years when I used to work at OrCAD (1997-1999) as a technical support Engineer, in the run-up to being taken over by Cadence, OrCAD Layout was marketed as a “shrink wrap solution” to PCB designs. i.e. you get it out of the box and install it immediately and in theory start designing PCBs albeit not very complex ones ones, as the tool didn’t really lend itself to complex designs or High speed constraint driven types of design. So the types of design you would get from OrCAD Layout would be fairly basic, I also found the tool a bit cumbersome to use.

After the Cadence take-over (1999),  We were all shipped from Basingstoke to Bracknell, and I was given the title of Applications Engineer, here I was introduced to Allegro PCB editor, which was a much better piece of PCB design software, this was a high end piece of kit and was aimed at larger organisations, generally it needed to be installed by the local IT guru and was available in both Windows and Unix platforms, with Allegro PCB Editor anything seemed possible, although the software had a far steeper learning curve, but once learnt it was a delight to use, and since the introduction of the constraint manager, this software is one of the best high end tools available on the Market today, and since leaving Cadence as a senior Applications engineer in 2001 is still my choice of PCB design software to date.

Mentor Pads is software which I have only been using for the past year, its aimed primarily at the medium to small sized companies, but even “fred in his shed” can afford this it, as its reasonably priced and is a scalable solution. On the top of the scale or “high end”  has features in it which you would perhaps only expect to find in Cadence or Mentor software. Pads is fairly easy to pick up, but once you have got over the initial learning curve, I found the software very labour intensive compared to say Allegro. Just doing simple things takes much longer to accomplish. But saying that you get what you pay for as the old adage goes and, it does a very good job on all sorts of designs from the simplest to the most complex.

As a PCB designer I am interested to know what other designers experience are with using different PCB design software, and what types of designs they regularly do with it, and the pitfalls if any of using that software.

Stephen Grant-Davies

Electronic Product Lifecycle Management e-PLM

Collaboration means working with others, where there is exchange of information within a team. In today’s workplace this means internal and external.  Very few companies’ develop products on their own. The capability of a collaborative team is far greater than individuals.

Businesses are being driven to collaborate more effectively because of:

• Increasing product complexity requiring work with partners to obtain knowledge and skills.
• The need to partner to manage risk on large projects.
• The need to partner to remain competitive in an ever more complex marketplace
• The increasing volume of business related information to be managed
• The disparate nature of information resources which are often ambiguous and poorly controlled
• The need for more concurrent working to decrease time to market
• Global teams with associated high travel and/or co-location costs

The ‘e’ in e-Collaboration simply provides the technology to allow us to work together more effectively by providing virtual workplaces. It’s all about team working in an electronic shared working environment to:

• Reduce the impact of location and distance
• Reducing the cost of storing and managing information
• Improving performance by managing and using information more efficiently.
• Improving the ability to work with customers, partners and suppliers

e-Collaboration nearly always involves businesses working together to co-ordinate processes, information and optimise resource usage.

For Quantum CAD being a PCB outsource partner all of the above is true. Traditionally communications has always been through e-mail. This relies on elaborate file names to ensure the correct versions of files are used.  However there is no control over this method. Everyone is reliant on communication to ensure files are edited in one location. Mistakes happen.

Two years ago we introduced web conferencing with our customers to allow co design of critical circuits and to perform design reviews. This has proved a big hit.

This has not resolved the master file syndrome.

We have resolved this issue. We now use an e-collaboration and Product Data Management solution (PDM) to manage all of our development activities. Our customers will be able to join our e-collaboration and PDM environment and store all relevant information on our secure server. There is no file transfer, just notification when new files are added or when files are modified. ECOs can be created and documents added/linked ending the need to ask that question, “did you get that e-mail with my latest changes?” (SPAM filter strikes again), or “who has got the master file?”