Board design system comes bang up to date

P-CAD 2004 is the latest version of Altium's board design system for PCB professionals.

P-CAD 2004 is the latest version of Altium's board design system for PCB professionals.

Offering over 50 new and enhanced features, this version offers upgraded technologies for layout and automatic and interactive routing, improved support for CAM file editing and circuit simulation, as well as a host of enhancements designed to give greater power and control over the PCB design process.

Altium's P-CAD PCB design system has a proven track record of reliability and productivity, and P-CAD 2004 introduces a host of new technologies that build on the strengths of previous versions.

Most notable is a powerful new interactive advanced route tool that significantly enhances the interactive routing process and allows users to automatically plough around board objects.

Advanced route enables designers to start routing from any net object, regardless of grid or connection line position.

Designers can choose to hug the routing around existing objects, plough around copper pours, board edges, cutouts and "keepouts", as well as move existing traces and vias.

Designers also have complete control over all interactive routing features, including the level of "glossing" or trace cleanup the tool attempts during interactive routing.

Altium's second-generation Situs topological autorouter boosts routing productivity even further.

It integrates seamlessly with the P-CAD PCB editor and features topological path mapping to improve completion rates on complex boards.

The Situs topical autorouter offers native routing support for nonorthogonal geometries, such as those found with high-density BGA devices and rotated components.

Unlike traditional shape-based routers, Situs searches directly for routing paths in nonorthogonal directions.

The router then chooses paths more intelligently, and makes better use of routing real estate on dense board designs.

Other key features of the P-CAD 2004 release is the inclusion, as standard, of Altium's CAMtastic 2004 CAM file editor, which provides complete editing of manufacturing file data prior to sending the board for fabrication, as well as enhanced Spice 3f5/XSpice mixed-signal circuit simulation.

"This new P-CAD release offers significant benefits to both current and new P-CAD customers", said Noko-Latrise McKinney, Altium's P-CAD Product Manager.

"The new interactive routing and autorouter features, combined with strengthened CAM file editing, simulation, board layout and editing, cement P-CAD's position as a leading tool for PCB professionals and further demonstrates Altium's commitment to ongoing development of the P-CAD design system".

P-CAD's supplied board-level component libraries have also been overhauled for the new release.

The libraries have been updated by Altium's Library Development Centre in compliance with the ISO9001:2000 standard, increasing the reliability and consistency of the component libraries.

Approximately 40,000 new components have been added, including over 600 connectors and around 4000 passives: making a total of almost 70,000 components.

Additionally, this release introduces 19 new manufacturers, including libraries from Agilent, AMP, Cypress, Maxim, Molex, ON Semiconductor, Panasonic, Philips and Zilog.

P-CAD 2004 is available for purchase immediately and new licenses are priced at Eur 9995.

Upgrade pricing starts at Eur 2995 for P-CAD 2002 users.

Other configurations are available from Eur 1695.

P-CAD 2002 customers who are on a valid prepaid upgrade subscription plan at the time of P-CAD 2004's release will be shipped the new version free of charge as part of their support contract.

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