In the past I have blogged about crossing splits in reference planes. This is probably the most glaringly obvious of reference plane changes, and will of course result in radiation from the signal.
But another type of reference plane change which is more common, and usually much less avoidable, is when a signal transitions layers through a via. In such a case, the reference planes will change and … Read More
This Tip is Shared by Yan Killy, Technical Marketing Engineer
There are technology and fabrication reasons why designers on occasion need to change the width of a trace during interactive routing. In PADS, you can easily accomplish this with settings in Design Rules and the use of Modeless Commands.
Using Design Rules you set can up the trace width range for all nets or one net in particular. In … Read More
Much of the your end PCB product costs can be directly influenced by the parts selected up front during the schematic capture phase of the design process. When you incorporate information into the designer’s part selection interface such as preferred part status, compliance, and/or obsolescence, you can reduce the work and rework of designs thus saving you additional costs.
Today, it is a challenge … Read More
Short for Web-based seminar, a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web. This week the DxDesigner team completed a series of 4 webinars with the following titles:
Unleash the Full Power of Your PCB Design Software Tools
Is Your PCB Engineering Team Collaborating Efficiently?
Scalable Design Creation Technology for Your PCB Design Flow
Reduce Product Costs with … Read More
Since FPGAs, field programmable gate arrays, are in their very nature fluid and changing, how do you force them into your electronics design techniques that all assume fixed parts? Hardware design uses, well… hardware, physical chips and resistors that have fixed functionality. We pull parts from libraries, wire them up, lay etch and build the gizmo. FPGAs throw out the definition of hardware … Read More
Did you know that support for documenting your designs with custom borders has been enhanced in recent releases of DxDesigner to automate and improve the ease of use and accuracy in documenting your electronic designs. Several Parameterized Properties reflect the current design information on your border symbol. Properties like @NAME, @SHEET, and @PRINTORDER are used to display the information specified … Read More
Because of today’s difficult design environments, business demands closely correspond with component selection for push for time-to-market demands, minimum flexibility in schedules, and constant pressure for productivity costs. Parts selected during PCB schematic capture directly impact the cost of the finished product.
Mentor Graphics PCB Data Management System (DMS) can lower product cost by incorporating … Read More
In the blog post on Chromatic Color Schemes Within DxDesigner I offered a prize for the best color scheme submitted!
I want to congratulate LeYuan for the winning entry and thank everyone who entered and responded back with the color schemes you use or designed.
Stay tuned for another promotion soon and feel free to comment or respond to any of the DxDesigner blogs and ask your own questions to the … Read More
Are you aware of the power of the DxDesigner Navigator in EE7.9.4 or PADS 9.5? As shipped the Navigator isn’t very exciting in appearance with the default display in the tree of symbol names and net names. But it is useful for opening pages, zooming to a component, renaming nets and components or simply selecting a net and double clicking to zoom to fit. Design information is lacking, because … Read More
Do you need to do more with your schematic? Are you frustrated with PADS Logic? It’s time to take a fresh look at a front-end layout tool that enables complete PCB design creation.
You can use DxDesigner for its many strengths, including:
Ease of use
Easy to learn
Tightly integrated with PADS layout
Take a look as I tell you more about the relationship between PADS Logic and DxDesigner, and … Read More
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 … Read More
You may have noticed many of the demo graphics used are new to the 7.9.4 release. The Aspen demo was designed to showcase the Expedition Enterprise flow starting with DxDesigner and I/O Designer and continuing through Expedition XtremePCB and Valor. On Tuesday, November 13 during my webinar on concurrent engineering I will feature Aspen and how the Mentor Technical Marketing team used the integrated … Read More
If you play well with others, concurrent PCB design these days just makes sense. As ATM’s have proven, you can expect a high reliability, multi-user database to work fast… enough. The benefits of having multiple layout designers all working at the same time start with a faster design cycle, but there are more benefits if you share using a tool with built-in parallelism. You would not … Read More
How efficiently does your team collaborate? How much time are your engineers spending on administrative tasks, review meetings, and unnecessary overhead? If the answer is, “too much!” then it’s time to evaluate Expedition Enterprise.
PCB Design creation, definition, and reuse has been completely updated in the new DxDesigner with greater capabilities and improved ease of use. In the second webinar … Read More
I’ve visited with many customers over the past couple of months at seminars, user group meetings, and other venues. One thing is conistent with everyone I spoke to – they are way to busy, and their companies are understaffed. They admit they need to find ways to work more productively, but don’t have the time to look, much less implement new tools a processes.
A great place to improve design efficiencies … Read More