International harmony

Anticipation

Now for the future. The last blog began by a glance over the shoulder to the past. This week, the perspective is forward looking.  And a new departure - a European location from which to make a posting. 

I’m in the Mentor Graphics office in Newbury, England and earlier in the week spent some time in the office in Altrincham farther north.  Preparations are in full swing for the release of 2009.1 and whilst I download a few pieces of environment and cannot proceed with a tutorial exercise, I can share a few details of what’s new. But not much in the way of detail, as the official list of what is contained in the release is concealed from the world at large untill public launch date. Here are the details I can reveal. It will be good. There will be additional new things.  Er, that’s about as far as I can go.

As well as the content of the new release I’m getting to know some of the ins and outs of Capital Harness XC styling capabilities a little deeper than I have already experienced. It is impressive. Tomorrow is Capital Analysis day. Analysis models. So the option of a modeling career is possibly open to me - in a sense. Yesterday also included a deep dive into the generative design flow and an exploration of the power of the Composite Wire Synthesis and the Abstract Wire Synthesis processes, CWS/AWS. In the future there will be no lessening of the pace of three letter acronyms. Mentor’s Integrated Electrical Systems Division programmers are devising new ones. 

Preparing Recommendations

Good opportunity also to hobnob with the colleagues from various parts of Europe, India and with familiar faces from North America who have also travelled over. Mentor Graphics divides staff into “factory” and “field” - distinguishing between those who are on the production side of the software business and those like myself who have more constant customer contact. Which reminds me, as well as the training and technical updates, there are a few emails from the jolly fine people whose success makes my continued employment happen. So I will go and deal with the half dozen emails which have popped into my inbox in the last half hour.

Finally as a teaser, here’s a picture of a slide from the Mentor Graphics internal release presentation.