PCB design suite checks up on fabrication

Innoveda has announced an enhanced version of its popular PowerPCB printed circuit board layout system that incorporates the powerful CAM350T DFF Audit module for board fabrication checking.

Innoveda has announced an enhanced version of its popular PowerPCB printed circuit board layout system that incorporates the powerful CAM350T DFF (Design For Fabrication) Audit module for board fabrication checking.

For the first time, designers and fabricators now can perform this function using a single tool.

In addition, the PowerPCB design environment now has expanded database capabilities, offers new routing and scripting enhancements and provides tighter integration with other Innoveda tools.

The DFF Audit in PowerPCB Version 4.0 enables users to perform fabrication design rule checks using PowerPCB's design verification tools.

The DFF Audit checks the design database for fabrication errors such as: acid traps, copper slivers, solder mask slivers, traces in a soldermask opening, silkscreen over pads, and minimum feature sizes.

Designers can fix problems earlier in the design process because they are addressed in the printed circuit board database rather than in a separate, downstream DFF application.

PowerPCB Version 4.0 is scheduled to be available in July.

"We took the DFF Audit from our best-selling CAM350 tool for fabrication analysis and integrated it with PowerPCB", said Rick Almeida, vice president of marketing, Product Realization Group.

"Designers and fabricators now can handle PCB layout and fabrication checks seamlessly.

There's no longer the need for designers to learn a second software application.

Previously, no matter which layout system was employed, designers had to use a third-party tool for their board fabrication checks.

Innoveda's streamlined approach is convenient, saves time, and is easy to use".

Innoveda's PowerPCB is an advanced design environment for complex, high-speed printed circuit boards.

This core interconnect solution for printed circuit boards is a powerful, shape-based rules-driven design layout solution.

It features automatic and interactive routing and superior OLE automation functionality for seamless interoperability with front-end design and back-end test, repair and manufacturing processes.

This integration provides a strong foundation for manufacturers of electronic products, enabling them to quickly and easily complete complex designs and speed time-to-volume-production.

PowerPCB now provides support for the definition and fabrication output of slotted holes.

The latest version also provides new routing functionality that enables board designers to freely stitch multiple vias to plane layers.

This allows users to quickly add vias to stitch ground planes and copper areas together without the need of traces.

Other routing features include user control of auto smoothing operations during the completion of Dynamic Route Editor (DRE) bus route commands, a dynamic trace length monitor, and trace coloring of all items associated with a connection.

PowerPCB's increased layer count enables users to create more complex designs.

PowerPCB now provides users with up to 250 total layers.

Through various dialog boxes, users can increase or decrease layers, define documentation layers and enable or disable user-specific layers.

Users can now benefit from PowerPCB's enhanced integration to the ViewDraw schematic-capture tool, and to the HyperLynx tool suite for signal integrity analysis.

This integration is handled through the BoardSim tool, which provides improved integration for data passing to and from the PowerPCB environment.

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