Long-running PCB CAD package gains more CAM

A new service pack provides a major upgrade to P-CAD 2002 with new CAM and simulation bonus technologies and significant enhancements.

A new service pack provides a major upgrade to P-CAD 2002 with new CAM and simulation bonus technologies and significant enhancements.

In line with Altium's nonrestrictive update policy, Service Pack 1 is available free of charge to all P-CAD 2002 customers.

Altium's proprietary Design Explorer (DXP) technology integration platform represents the next step in technology innovation for the P-CAD product line.

Since the PC was first used for design automation, P-CAD has been synonymous with PCB design expertise and high quality PCB layout tools.

Service Pack 1 brings DXP technology to P-CAD 2002 Suite customers by giving them access to CAMtastic DXP, the latest version of Altium's complete CAM verification and editing system, and a new DXP-based mixed-signal circuit simulator.

These two new DXP technologies are fully integrated with P-CAD 2002 and provide a major upgrade to P-CAD's CAM and circuit simulation capabilities.

CAMtastic DXP is a major update to CAMtastic 2000 and will provide P-CAD 2002 designers with a more sophisticated CAD/CAM tool solution for PCB fabrication.

Time-to-market constraints dictate that the transfer from design to manufacturing be as smooth as possible.

CAMtastic DXP has been specifically developed to facilitate this data transfer and will save designers time by ensuring designs are error free and completely ready for efficient fabrication and assembly.

CAMtastic DXP's new features include bidirectional ODB++ support, additional DRCs for strengthened data verification, advanced panelisation, and extensive numerically controlled drill and rout features.

The ease and flexibility of analysing circuit simulation results has been greatly increased by the many enhancements in the new mixed-signal circuit simulator.

The post processing of simulation data has been enhanced to give more flexibility in the way that waveforms and plots can be arranged displayed and analysed.

Pole-zero analysis has been added to the array of simulation options, and enhancements to the copy to clipboard function now remove the need to take screen dumps.

The data exporting has also been enhanced to make it easier for designers to further analyse their simulation data in external programs or spreadsheets.

Extensive updates have been made the to SimView server to make simulation results easier to view.

With Service Pack 1, Altium has added support for cutouts in patterns in the PCB layout editor.

This new feature will improve pattern support and save significant design time.

Service Pack 1 also improves the stability of P-CAD 2002 and provides better flexibility and enhanced performance.

Service Pack 1 is now available free of charge to all licensed P-CAD 2002 customers.

P-CAD 2002 Module customers have access to the fixes and enhancements from Service Pack 1, which are available for download from the P-CAD website.

P-CAD 2002 Suite customers have access to the fixes and enhancements and the bonus DXP technologies from Service Pack 1.

Due to the large file size of the new technologies, a CD containing the fixes, enhancements and bonus technologies will be shipped free of charge to all P-CAD 2002 Suite customers and will arrive no later than the first week of July 2003.

Please note: to run the DXP Bonus Technologies it is necessary to have either the Windows XP or Windows 2000 operating system installed.

A free trial version of P-CAD 2002 including Service Pack 1 will soon be available on a CD and as a file download from the P-CAD website.

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