25 June 2013 – Munich, Germany and Westford, MA, USA – Zuken addresses the needs of global design teams and their downstream partners with new versions of its Design Force and Design Gateway software, part of the CR-8000 multi-board design solution. With an emphasis on productivity enhancements and new intellectual property (IP) management capabilities, hardware engineers and PCB designers can collaborate efficiently and securely with all project participants. Design Force includes new embedded permission controls for IP management, support for forward and back-annotation of multi-board designs, and multi-area interactive and automatic routing. Design Gateway adds a new spacing class function and an Intel Schematic Connectivity Format (ISCF) for Intel design review.
Concurrent design supports collaboration
“With design teams around the world, we need a PCB and system-level design platform that allows our teams to work concurrently and also deals with complex multi-board designs. Zuken’s CR-8000 Design Gateway and Design Force does this and more. Because of advanced multi-board capabilities and an integrated high-speed design environment, we collaborate effectively while pushing technology boundaries, which play an important role in our product development,” says Jerry Murray PCB Design team leader at Cummins Power Generation, a leader in design and manufacture of power generation equipment.
New IP management functionality
The ever-increasing trend for outsourcing design work and managing globally-dispersed teams means the ability to protect IP by controlling access to design data is a priority for many engineers. Industry studies have found that companies who are successful in executing strategies for improved efficiency and PCB quality (and in turn, higher product profitability) must be capable of limiting access to design information when working with suppliers.
This is a productivity issue for many enterprise managers who subcontract work, reducing the hours spent filtering, partitioning and deleting information to protect their IP. Additionally, many companies need to control data access for internal staff.
To address these challenges, Design Force has new embedded permission controls that make this process quick and straightforward, allowing secure and controlled data exchange during the design process. Design information is controlled and protected when shared between dispersed teams or third-party partners, allowing encryption or restriction of sensitive design data.
Design efficiency
Everyday design efficiency has been addressed in this release. Design Gateway’s new spacing class wizard reduces the time and effort to set up design rules. Additionally, support for Intel Schematic Connectivity Format (ISCF) enables customers to send design schematics to Intel for review to ensure that their chip sets are implemented properly to meet specifications.
Design Force supports forward and back-annotation of multi-board designs, eliminating manual effort when managing changes between multiple PCBs in a system. This feature, unique to Design Force, means that engineers are no longer constrained to dealing with one PCB at a time and do not need to interrupt their design flow to open up separate tools.
Another new multi-board feature, DRAGON EX module for multi-area interactive and automatic routing, enables users to create multiple strategy-driven areas on a board and simultaneously autoroute each section, while continuing to route interactively. This significantly improves design completion times and takes advantage of the speed offered by the latest multi-core CPU technology.
ECAD/MCAD collaboration
A new Design Force feature proving essential with fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturers is a new ECAD/MCAD collaboration ability. This allows import of a mechanical housing to a single or multi-board design, enabling users to accurately conduct interference checks concurrently during board layout. This reduces iterations between mechanical and PCB design as designers use real-world, real-time enclosures and constraints.
For more information see www.zuken.com/design-revolution
