Editor’s Pick: CR-8000 2016

Dear DE Reader:

Let’s coin a 21st century word: internetifying. Internetifying everything from smart power grids to embedded chip readers to find out who owns a lost Schnauzer has elevated the importance of PCB (printed circuit board) design beyond mission critical. Yet, a lot of PCB design is still executed in last century’s isolation from its intended product deployment. Today’s Pick of the Week write-up looks at PCB design software developed for this era of internetified products.

Basically, product-centric means you model and validate designs for product requirements. That is, you design, optimize and validate your architecture to make sure it fits the enclosure and conforms with requirements like weight and power. Then, you move on to detailed design.

CR-8000 has the tools to optimize a design at both the product and PCB design level. Its all-in-one design process encompasses 2D/3D multi-board design and implementation, FPGA (field programmable gate array) I/O optimization and chip, package and board co-design as well as 3D MCAD integration. It has features like scalable library and data management and a graphical pin manager. It has built-in analysis tools with configurable checks, and its interface is designed to be easy to use and context sensitive.

One interesting thing about CR-8000 is that it’s built with a 3D kernel. This means that it is quick and its graphics are nice.

The 2016 edition of CR-8000 has many cool enhancements, chief of which is concurrent multi-area PCB design. The gist here is that on-site or disbursed engineering teams can simultaneously work on and modify the same area of a design. Everybody has their own view into the action, and they can see in an instant what’s happening in the big picture.

Zuken says that the new bending flex with collision check capability in the 2016 release of its CR-8000 PCB design software can help avoid design rework and iterations between ECAD/MCAD. Image courtesy of Zuken.

Another nice introduction in version 2016 is an improved part swap function. This lets you see obsolete parts in a circuit then make changes collectively. So no more hours spent manually hunting for then replacing superseded parts, only to realize later you missed a few.

The 2016 edition of CR-8000 has a ton of other new features like design analysis upgrades and enhancements for more efficient task management and design re-use. These are covered in today’s write-up. Your best bet is to sign up for a demo. Zuken has internetified the demo by putting it on the cloud. It looks really thorough. Hit today’s Pick of the Week link and learn more.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, DE