MEMS design software supports education

Tanner EDA is supporting a Europe-wide MEMS education drive by Europractice to speed up the adoption of MEMS technologies.

Tanner EDA is supporting a Europe-wide MEMS education drive by Europractice to speed up the adoption of MEMS technologies.

The educational and networking programme known as Simulation Action and Investment in MEMS and SiP, or STIMESI, launched at the beginning of this year, aims to help European universities and research institutes exploit the potential of MEMS and SiP technologies.

Tanner EDA is exclusively represented in Europe by EDA Solutions (Southampton, UK) through which the agreement was instigated.

Dedicated MEMS tool suites are often priced beyond the reach of academic and research organisations so Tanner is making its L-Edit MEMS available via the Europractice Software Service.

This service provides easy access to a wide range of cost-effective, leading-edge IC, FPGA, MCM and microsystem design tools for noncommercial teaching and research.

L-Edit MEMS, derived from Tanner's proven mask layout tool L-Edit, is ideally suited to the custom approach to MEMS design, where engineers start with the layout of their process masks.

It complements the popular and widely used Tanner Tools Pro, and MEMS Pro from SoftMEMS, aimed more at system level IC and MEMS design, which are already available through the Europractice Software Support Service.

L-Edit MEMS has all the most important features needed for full custom MEMS design in an easy-to-use package that runs under Windows.

These include all-angle polygon support, so that complex shapes with nonstandard openings are easy to create and manipulate, complete layer visualisation, all-angle Boolean layer generation and design rule checking, and robust algorithms for curved objects.

The tool also features high resolution EPS output for direct printing of masks and easy importing and exporting to and from the industry-standard AutoCAD DXF format, directly from the menu.

The four foundry partners in STIMESI - Infineon (formerly SensoNor), Memscap, Qinetiq and Tronics - will provide L-Edit training and process design kits.

Any commercial companies interested in MEMS design can contact EDA Solutions, Tanner EDA's exclusive European representative.

The company can provide software, design kits and training to support the use of the Tanner tools in MEMS design.

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