Zuken Updates Design Gateway, Design Force Tools

Design Gateway and Design Force, the core of Zuken's CR-8000 2D/3D multi-PCB and IC packaging design solution, have been updated to include significant new placement and routing functionality for both conventional and high-speed designs, 3D mechanical enclosure clearance checking, and interfaces to third party simulation tools.

Placement and routing templates enable designers who work with bus routing or flex circuits to follow either reference routing or the board outline, then save the route as a template for parallel routes within the same design. For high-speed designs, topology templates can now be created based on reference designs that include guidelines for track lengths, widths and spacing, reducing the effort to configure and manage constraints, especially with differential pair routing, the company says.

Multi-board design, a feature of CR-8000 permitting the coordinated design of multiple boards in one product, now has the ability to check 3D clearance between boards directly within the PCB design environment. It also reports and cross-probes to any clearance violations between objects including board outlines, components, nets, and mechanical data.

Creation of intelligent PDF drawings that include bookmarks for components, and intelligent text for items such as reference designators, is now available for manufacturing reviews and document sharing.

Design Force 2014 has increased support for a number of third party simulation and analysis tools. Users may now import conductor figures generated in AWR Microwave Office into Design Force using the new Import IFF function; import data on the optimization of decoupling capacitors from ANSYS PI Advisor into Design Force using the new Import PI Advisor function; and exchange bidirectional information with Agilent ADS using the new ADS Board Link file format.

For more information, visit Zuken.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.