Mentor Expedition Tutorial: Making New Components from Existing Parts.
January, 2015
It’s interesting that in only 2 of the last 5 years PCB design tools made the EDN top 100 Hot Products. In 2013 and again in 2014, of the 7 products in the EDA category of the Hot 100 only 3 were PCB product related. At Mentor Graphics we are therefore absolutely delighted that for 2014 we received 2 of the 3 top 100 Hot product ratings for the high end of PCB System design with Xpedition® xSD and the low end of PCB design with Designer Schematic. Excitingly both these hot products extend the new VX release of the Xpedition Core PCB flow that already delivers red-hot, leading edge technology into new areas of PCB design.
What is system design for PCB? Our customers build things, and it is a rare system with only one standalone PCB. Typically several PCB’s mate together to become a Multi-board Systems through various interconnects such as wires, cables, optical or RF connections. Xpedition® xSD extends the PCB design tools into this multi-board design space. During PCB system design you can trace a signal from a sensor to a PCB, across the multiple PCBs and continue through the system of systems design completing your end product. Xpedition® xSD ensures the accuracy of PCB interconnects and traces signals from component pins, through the interconnecting PCB traces, interconnects, and wires to the final destination of that signal on another remote printed circuit board. With pre-defined ‘mated connector pairs’, connector pinning is automatic and accurate and signal integrity is ensured through your design.
![Graphics Graphics](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126446668/162198582.png)
If you are still in the concept stage of design, Xpedition® xSD, assists in moving functional circuit blocks from one PCB to another, creating or removing connector pairs as required maintaining PCB trace and wire accuracy. Specification documents are integrated into the design database, maintaining a single design data center eliminating lost or misplaced system level documents and incorrect information. For more details on Xpedition® xSD click the link or photo linked below.
The second hot product hitting the market from Mentor is Designer Schematic and Layout. Mentor Graphics partnered with Digi‑Key to scale down and optimize a Professional PCB flow targeted at individuals, makers, and small workgroups. More than a scaled down version of DxDesigner, Designer Schematic was reworked to be smaller, lighter and much easier to install and use. For example the entire product download was reduced by 87% compared to our normal PADS flow. Ease of use was reworked and improved to eliminate tweaking after install with new intuitive keyboard commands, video tooltips, wiki based help, and a simple innovative text search to find the right component for your design. Quickly select the right component with Designer integration to PartQuest; an online search tool linked to Digi‑Key’s 4,000,000+ electronic parts database. With 360,000+ parts linked to ADI Ultra Librarian electronic symbols and PCB footprints and over a million parts are ready to be created with downloadable symbol templates complete with Digi‑Key ordering information; Designer has more than 5 times the number of parts over our competitors, allowing you to design your PCB with modern parts now instead of searching through component libraries that never are and can never be current. For more information on Designer, go to www.digikey.com/designer
November, 2012
For those who missed today’s webinar titled Is Your PCB Engineering Team Collaborating Efficiently? The archived addition is now live! This was the second in the series of four webinars on DxDesigner. To see the first webinar and subscribe to the next two, click to register for the webinar series.
In webinar number two on concurrency, I reviewed why concurrency is important and how the innovative architecture behind DxDesigner and the Expedition flow enhances the productivity of your design team reducing the time to create a PCB and at the same time increasing the odds of “getting it right the first time.” Watch and learn how to enable the power in the Mentor Graphics Expedition Enterprise flow!
Mentor Graphics
If your new to concurrency, watch the three demonstrations of concurrency inside the webinar, including working with DxDesigner concurrently and Xtreme CES. Even if your using DxDesigner in the PADS or independent flows you can have multiple engineers working on the DxDesigner schematic simultaneously.
And if you missed webinar one in the series, click the link to watch Unleash the Full Power of Your PCB Design Software Tools with presenter Andy Watts.
Expedition Software Tutorial
Gary Lameris
Mentor Graphics, Technical Marketing Engineer
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Mentor Graphics, Technical Marketing Engineer
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Gary Lameris joined Mentor Graphics in 2008 as a Technical Marketing Engineer for the Mentor Expedition PCB flow. Prior to Mentor Graphics, he has served on the DxDesigner and PADS Customer Advisory Boards, and is the founder and manager of the DxDesigner Yahoo forum. Throughout his career, Gary has served on the boards of a variety of associations, including; chairing the Associate Membership Committee for the National Conference on Weights and Measures, serving on the weighing subcommittee of the National Type Evaluation Technical Committees (NTETC), and acting as industry advisor to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). His experience includes 22 years as a Senior Design Engineer at Hobart Corporation and Program Manager at Simclar Inc., a contract assembler of printed circuit boards. Gary has a BSEE from Michigan Technological University.