Many connectors and other components require decals/footprints that have their pins laid out in a polar pattern. In many CAD systems, this can be a time consuming effort to build these in the library. It can be done very quickly in PADS!
Bill Tkachuk CSD AE, recently wrote TechNote MG582079 that steps the user through building these devices. If you have access to SupportNet, you can view a video … Read More
When designing a PCB, most of your time may be spent interactively routing.
PADS has always been known for having powerful, yet easy to use interactive routing capabilities to help engineers and designers in this phase of the design process. You need the ability to quickly connect the easy traces (is there such a thing anymore?) as well as be assured that your critical nets with length constraints, … Read More
Do you use PADS? Did you know that the PADS ES Suite ships with the DxDesigner Schematic Editor providing a robust and powerful design environment tightly coupled to PADS layout with DxDatabook a powerful component information system and cross probing.
With an innovative and reliable architecture, designed from the start to support hierarchy; a user needs only to create a circuit once before reusing … Read More
Taking a look at PADS is now easier than ever – we’re on the Cloud! The full PADS ES Suite Evaluation is still available to download, but if you want a quick and easy way to evaluate PADS, check out the Virtual Labs.
Here, you will have access to the full PADS ES Suite to evaluate, with lessons and exercises on simulation and analysis, design capture and CIS, and PCB layout and routing.
No installation, … Read More
Are you doing any simulation today, specifically for signal integrity issues? Many design professionals believe that simulaiton is only needed for really bleeding-edge technology. But in my recent meetings with customers, they are finding they need to simulate designs that once did not. Even on simpler consumer electronic devices, or industrial controllers, the components they need to purchase for … Read More
Have you ever wanted to, or had the requirement to print a color image of a Decal? This can be done directly in the Decal Editor.
In this PADS Tip and Trick, Bill Tkachuk from CSD explains how:
1. Load a decal into the Decal Editor and zoom to extents
2. Define the visible colors you want printed
3. Open the Output Window by going to View > Output Window
4. Select the Macro tab within the … Read More
Altera goes back to 1984, when you could get 720KB on a floppy. After all these years, FPGAs still provide the right mix of being flexible like software while still being fixed and fast like hardware. Why does this cool idea persist in new product designs?
Fortunately the big FPGA vendors, such as Xilinx, have continued to invest in R&D. Innovations from internal genius and acquisitions have … Read More
Today’s Tip and Trick comes from Bill Tkachuk in customer support.
PADS Layout has very powerful split plane functionality. Along with this, it gives the user great control on how to change, modify, and customize the thermal relief and antipads in these splits.
Bill wrote a great TechNote (MG581658) which gives step-by-step directions on how to create split planes, set default thermal and antipads, … Read More
In an article published last Semptember on the Huffington Post there was a claim that the United States is facing a serious STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) talent crises. The author pointed to a study by the US Department of Labor claiming that the STEM workforce accounts for 50% of economic growth while only 5% of the working population are employed in STEM fields. The article … Read More
So far 2013 has been a great year to explore the creative drawing aspects in DxDesigner. I’ve been ignoring my blog writing but I’ve been drawing several new schematics and updating many of our older reference designs with the new capabilities in DxDesigner 7.9.4.
In the example below, an entire new design was created, from a new library symbol set, finding and drawing a reference schematic … Read More
While recording a how-to video about placing parts on a schematic, one part is showing off the hyperlink to the datasheet. That is moderately cool in the hardware designer circles, but what happened when I clicked the link was beyond cool. To see the whole picture, I have a Windows-Dell and a MacBook Pro next to each other on my desk. I use virtual machines (VM) to keep all the various flavors of … Read More
Last week at DesignCon 2013, I provided an Analysis Anchored to Reality presentation of the highlighting and validating the new features of HyperLynx 9.0. Teledyne LeCroy, Molex, CCN, and Picosecond Pulse Labs partnered with us to provide measurement equipment, hardware to test, and a pattern generator for this demonstration. We started off with a correlation study so customers could see that the analysis … Read More
The Mentor Graphics support group has been busy this past year creating several webinars and support videos on DxDesigner. If you’re subscribed to the SupportPro Newsletter, you may have noticed eight new videos posted from our support team on using DxDesigner.
These videos are also available at this link: http://supportnet.mentor.com/reference/tutorials with your SupportNet account.
SupportNet
Recently … Read More
Over the past 16 years I’ve had the pleasure of being part of the development of HyperLynx and am excited about the latest release, HyperLynx 9.0 as we are simultaneously celebrating its 25th birthday and 10th year with Mentor Graphics.
HyperLynx was founded in 1988 when cell phones were the size of a lunch box, FPGAs were just hitting the streets with a Xilinx 2064 touting 64 logic cells, VHDL and … Read More
I’ve spoken with several customers recently who have, or are in the process of transitioning from PADS Logic to the new DxDesigner. Their reasons were consistent: they needed a component information system, or analog simulation, and/or their designs were getting more complex and need a more robust hierarchy.
Does this describe you? Now may be the time for you to consider the move to DxDesigner.
Take … Read More