DownStream Technologies has announced CAM350 Release 8, the first major release of the product since purchasing it from Innoveda (now Mentor Graphics). CAM350 is the acknowledged price/performance leader in delivering powerful fabrication software solutions to both the design and fabrication industries.
"The economic decline in high technology has placed greater pressure on PCB Design groups who now must guarantee designs submitted for fabrication can be produced without the need for artwork modification," said Rick Almeida, president of DownStream Technologies. "Changes made on the fabrication side could compromise engineering intent, as well as delay time-to-volume production. Now more than ever, engineering and manufacturing groups must rely on CAM software to detect and fix potential fabrication problems earlier in the process. With the release of CAM350 Release 8, we have given the industry a powerful way to address these problems," he added.
CAM350 Release 8 features a variety of updates including a radically new, yet uncomplicated graphical user interface (GUI), performance speed and quality improvements and powerful new usability and productivity functions - all designed to deliver a highly effective solution that meets the needs of today's design and fabrication challenges.
Graphical user interface (GUI) - Release 8 contains a new look and feel that uses the latest Microsoft style guides. The GUI features customisable and dockable toolbars, standard and user created icons, context-sensitive menus, enhanced mouse support, shortcut bars and new pan and zooming functions. The new GUI allows users to customise the environment to meet their specific needs, allowing common procedures to be simplified.
Since the netlist comparison has become the key verification process between design and fabrication, Release 8 contains an enhanced netlist comparison process which allows users to view errors graphically instead of by producing text reports, reducing verification time. A sortable error report that is linked to the graphical display can also be created. Users can view multiple errors or sort by feature type, feature size or error size, quickly verifying the results of any DRC or analysis function.
Design for fabrication (DFF) errors are also now quickly identified and automatically repaired without user intervention. Barco Import and Polygon Pour - processes that are historically slow in CAM tools - have been improved five to 10 times, according to the company.
There are a number of other enhancements including: negative plane analysis; IPC-D-356A support; filtering function; panel editor macros; report sorting; draw to Flash; measure net to net.
CAM350 Release 8 was previewed at PCB Design Conference West in San Jose. The company says there is no charge for this update for DownStream customers under current maintenance agreements.
For more information contact Kobus van Rooyen, ASIC Design Services, 011 315 8316, [email protected]
| Tel: | +27 11 315 8316 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
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