Advanced routing added to PCB design tools

Mentor Graphics has announced the latest product release of its Expedition Series of PCB design tools, WG2000.5.

Mentor Graphics has announced the latest product release of its Expedition Series of PCB design tools, WG2000.5.

WG2000.5 brings Expedition Series users improved routing capabilities and superior ease-of-use to shorten design times and increase design performance.

As part of Mentor's ongoing product development, this version offers Expedition Series users productivity enhancements for design layout, advanced interconnect features, verification and analysis capabilities for high-speed design and system definition functions.

This release of the Expedition Series also gives users access to the Mentor Graphics HDL solution for field programmable gate array (FPGA) design, FPGA Advantage through the integration with DesignView and FPGA BoardLink.

In addition, through integration enhancements to Expedition PCB and Design Capture, Expedition users also gain access to Mentor's high-speed solutions, ICX and Tau, for analysis and verification of Expedition designs.

"We are committed to delivering our electronic systems design customers continued performance improvements and expanded capabilities", said Henry Potts, general manager and vice president, Systems Design Division, Mentor Graphics.

"These new features will allow our Expedition customers to continue their design innovations and help them to stay ahead of their competition".

Through the latest enhancements to Mentor's AutoActive technology, the Expedition Series includes several new capabilities to make design layout faster, easier and more accurate.

The addition of a "dynamic area fills" function speeds the design process by automatically clearing plane shapes as modifications are made and by dynamically updating area fills as parts are moved and traces and vias are edited.

With this automated process, the displayed graphics exactly match the rules setup, eliminating the need for tedious post-processing.

New multiplow features for bus routing include new via patterns and modification commands to help designers quickly determine the best via placement option.

Users also have the ability to preview via patterns before they are placed to ensure routability.

The new design rule checking (DRC) capability provides real-time color-coded feedback and a shadow mode view to allow designers to quickly find design errors and plainly identify the action necessary to correct them.

The addition of "rules by area" supports design requirements for advanced packaging and interconnect.

By allowing designers to define a separate set of rules and assign them to a specific area or layer, this greatly improves routing around BGAs and other fine-pitched parts.

Expedition PCB now features an interface to Mentor Graphics ICX and Tau products, bringing advanced signal integrity analysis and timing verification options to Expedition users.

For the first time, the powerful verification functionality found in the ICX tool suite can be used to analyse and verify Expedition designs for electrical correctness.

Additionally, Tau's integration with DesignView enables Expedition users to take advantage of the innovative symbolic timing analysis approach of Tau, the premier solution for board-level timing verification.

For systems designers integrating FPGAs on PCBs, Expedition PCB now interfaces with Mentor's best-in-class HDL solution for FPGA design, FPGA Advantage.

Through DesignView enhancements, designers will have the ability to access design capture, simulation and synthesis tools to move rapidly between board and FPGA design.

FPGA BoardLink completes the FPGA design process by automatically synchronising FPGA interconnect changes with the board design.

The Expedition Series combines ease-of-use with advanced functionality, enabling designers to create today's most complex designs and making it ideal for designers working in independent environments or small teams.

The scalable product configuration of the Expedition Series allows designers to choose the right level of automation for their design needs.

The ease of use, unprecedented performance and scalability the Expedition Series offers make it ideal for industries requiring today's most complex PCB designs, such as computer and telecommunications.

The Expedition Series is powered by AutoActive technology, the core of Mentor's PCB design solutions.

AutoActive technology combines the power of shape-based automatic routing and interactive editing into a single, easy to use design environment.

With AutoActive, routing tasks can be completed interactively or automatically, while always adhering to the same set of design rules.

This unique capability allows designers to easily switch between automatic and manual editing as needed.

Expedition WG2000.5 is available immediately from Mentor Graphics.

For existing Expedition customers, the WG2000.5 update is available as part of the maintenance agreement.

Expedition Series pricing starts at $10,000.

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