Zuken continues to add new team design capabilities with new versions of its System Planner and Design Gateway software, part of the CR-8000 single and multi-board design solution. Zuken’s CR-8000 is the industry’s only next-generation product-centric design solution for creating complex product designs.
System Planner and Design Gateway – at the core of Zuken’s CR-8000 2D/3D single and multi-PCB and IC packaging design solution (which was introduced in 2011) – contain enhancements that allow teams of engineers to work concurrently on the same design, new checks to ensure integrity in hierarchical and system level designs, and enhanced generation of intelligent PDF data to aid design communication.
“CR-8000 is extremely intuitive to use,” says Ralf Huenting, Senior PCB Design Engineer at Elster, leaders in smart metering technology. “We recently formed a department to develop a new product with a multi-board design; selecting CR-8000 ensured we have the latest product design technology. We are implementing a successful migration from CR-5000, which we run in parallel with CR-8000,” he adds.
Concurrent design creation
Each System Planner module – known as Logical, Physical, Geometric and Parametric visionaries – can be opened by concurrent users. This allows multi-disciplinary development teams to work on the same design. Detailed circuits generated in System Planner are bi-directionally synchronized with Design Gateway. When a Design Gateway schematic is updated, for example, when reference designators are changed, the updates are reflected in System Planner’s visionaries.
Hierarchical visibility and design checks
Information on connections between hierarchy levels is readily available in the new Hierarchy Connection View browser. Design Gateway has several new checks to detect connectivity errors across hierarchical and system level designs. Users can easily confirm connection consistency between block pins and their associated nets, hierarchical pins and their associated nets, signals routed through multiple boards, and net properties between multiple boards – detecting errors upfront in the process.
Intelligent PDF data supports teamwork
Design Gateway supports the generation of intelligent PDF data including bookmarks, item properties, and navigation of hierarchical designs within the PDF document. This provides detailed design information to system architects, PCB designers, manufacturers and others who may not have access to Design Gateway.
Block associated constraint information
Constraint information is directly associated with functional blocks within Design Gateway, enabling copying and editing of constraints on a block basis. Constraints can be managed at the block level and, more importantly, the constraints associated with reuse circuits are reusable.
For more information see www.zuken.com/cr-8000
