CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
28 March 2005
Product News
Mentor Graphics' Integrated Constraint Entry System Facilitates High-Productivity Team Design of PCB Systems
Mentor Graphics Corporation announced it has released its next-generation constraint editor system (CES) into its ExpeditionT Series and Board Station® RE PCB design flows. Mentor is leading the way by enabling definition, adherence and verification of physical constraints throughout the entire PCB systems design process for complex designs, improving designer productivity and design quality. CES integrates with the entire systems design flow from schematic entry through physical layout, facilitating multi-disciplined communication of high-speed design rules and constraints between engineers, designers and their tools.
"Because of topology awareness, CES has made it much easier to constrain complex, high-speed circuitry," stated Clint Harames, senior hardware design engineer, F5 Networks. "Our constraint entry time has been tremendously reduced, allowing us to get products to market faster and we are only scratching the surface of its capabilities. I look forward to exploiting CES' scripting capabilities, which will further reduce our constraint entry time."
Mentor Graphics® CES provides a unified interface for design engineers and layout designers to specify and verify constraints. CES is fully integrated into the Mentor Graphics PCB system design solutions, providing a seamless flow of constraints from schematic through layout to final verification. Constraints can be entered in terms familiar to team members through a common GUI and then automatically accessed by individual tools in their native formats. Productivity gains can be realized through usability features such as automatic differential pair identification and constraint templates, which make entering complex constraints much easier. Advanced automatic topology and an interactive tuning meter are enabled when CES is used in the design flow.
An important aspect of CES is its ability to provide customers with design rules and constraints that can be developed and modified throughout the design process. These rules and constraints then become intellectual property (IP) that is available to designers and engineers for their current designs, as well as future designs. This ability to reuse the physical design IP through a single entry point for management and access is what sets CES apart from other solutions currently available.
CES also supports bi-directional cross probing, which highlights and selects between a spreadsheet-based constraint interface and the schematic capture and layout tools, enabling designers to view nets and constraints in their native environment. In addition, constraint values are fully synchronized during the forward and backward annotation process with intelligent handling of connectivity changes. Users can create hierarchical rule classes that ease the association of constraints to design objects. Nets can be constrained by one rule at the class level, significantly reducing the number of constraints manually entered in the design. CES also supports user- and pre-defined automatic topologies, enabling quick assignment of pin ordering that is utilized throughout the design process.
"Our customers consistently face design cycle time and product quality pressures in today's competitive environment," said Henry Potts, vice president and general manager, Systems Design Division, Mentor Graphics. "In an effort to meet customer demands, we continue to develop next generation solutions that enable them to overcome their design challenges. With the superior integration of our CES solution our customers are able to experience significant productivity gains and improved design quality."
Pricing and Availability
The Constraint Editor System is available immediately at no cost for current Expedition Series and Board Station customers. More information is available at http://www.mentor.com/expedition or by calling 800-547-3000 ext. 2.
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