PADS, Viewlogic meld PCB design, layout

Electronic News, June 12, 1995 by Walter Andrews

MARLBOROUGH, MASS.--PADS Software and Viewlogic Systems last week strengthened their ties to provide a more integrated offering for the design and layout of printed circuit boards (PCBs).

The two companies will separately provide an integrated, compatible suite of PCB design tools, the likes of which are only provided now by broad-line CAE vendors, such as Mentor Graphics, Cadence Design Systems and Intergraph.

"It's unique in that you have two separate vendors developing in their area of expertise and then working to integrate those products for the user...and using standards and integration to accomplish it," Diana Harotian, VP of marketing for PADS, told Electronic News.

"Viewlogic provides all of the design analysis and simulation aspect of circuit design. We provide all the (PCB) physical layout, manufacturing and fabrication aspects," said Rick Almeida, PADS product marketing manager.

He said the single vendors providing the complete PCB design-layout solution "by trying to provide all the pieces of the solution...get defocused. What we have here is two best-in-class providers, Viewlogic and PADS, working together to provide a tightly integrated solution to the customer."

The executive continued: "We've had an existing OEM relationship with Viewlogic. What we're doing now is partnering with them to both penetrate into the desktop mainstream market. We're bringing about a higher level of integration between multiple vendors that could only be previously accomplished with one vendor...other vendors like Intergraph, Cadence and Mentor, who provide both CAE and PCB layout."

The interface between the Viewlogic and PADS functions will be shown at this week's Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco: "their schematic capture product cross probing with our Power PCB layout product. We'll be showing that cross-probing functionality at DAC," Ms. Harotian said.

Viewlogic and PADS will be introducing the new capability over the summer and will have it available for delivery by October, she said.

Last year, Viewlogic--along with Cooper & Chyan Technology and Zuken-Redac--joined PADS' Vendor Integration Alliance (EN, Design Software, June 27, 1994). All will participate on "level two" of the program, where the vendors link the databases of their respective tools.

Building on this existing OEM relationship, Ms. Harotian said this new strengthening of the partnership "denotes our intention to be much more closely tied. Prior to this, Viewlogic has sort of been very open-ended with respect to PCB and hasn't given specific focus to a vendor."

She added: "We're going to be working toward a common interface and products that have a much closer look and feel essentially so that to the end user it'll be much more transparent usage of different tools. We're both working against similar standards and they're using some IPC-related codes...developed internally as a mechanism to enable more of the crossprobing communication between our products. We're also making that available to other vendors as well."

PADS, she said, is "a printed circuit board company, PCB layout and design company, partly EDA, the middle component before you get to manufacturing...Viewlogic does front-end simulation as well as other tools as well as the schematic capture. It is the schematic capture that ties most closely to our products that enables the user to take advantage of the other things they offer in EDA. That's how the link works."

The executive said Viewlogic and PADS will continue to sell their respective products separately through independent channels. She noted that PADS recently introduced Power PCB at a basic price in the $18,000 range.

The new partnership is "really the intention to work at a very different level together" and will include both marketing and technical cooperation "in that we both have dedicated engineers to this interface process," Ms. Harotian said.

Rick Lucier, Viewlogic PC group VP, said: "Viewlogic recognizes the performance that the PADS-PowerPCB product will deliver to PC users. In response to demand from our customers and prospects, we have decided to strengthen our partnership with PADS and provide the market with unified design solutions."

Through the integration of these product sets, the two companies intend to set a standard for inter-process communications (IPC) that can be used by other vendors, and the industry as a whole, to create unified solutions from best-of-breed products, they said. As the result of this enhanced relationship, Viewlogic will become the first company to meet the criteria necessary to become a "level three" participant in PADS' VIA program, it added.

VIA links combine PADS' PCB design systems with third-party tools for analysis, mechanical CAD, test and manufacturing. In addition, the program provides PADS customers with access to emerging technologies, complementary design tools and a road map for integrating their own, internally developed design tools into PADS' design environment.

Viewlogic's PRO capture "level three" status denotes a database-level integration, achieved through the active engineering efforts of both companies. At level three, PADS certifies the integrity of the integration link.