Feb 17 2010 Plano Tx- CADSTAR to Fabmaster Translator announced by PCE Texas.  Plano CAD Engineering now operating as PCE Texas has leveraged its years of experience as a CADSTAR dealer and former Fabmaster Dealer to provide a new fast translator from the PCB Layout tool's archive or .cpa data format to Fabmaster's FATF file format.  This new tool will allow CADSTAR PCB Layout personnel to provide the test format file directly for quicker access to flying probe board testers.  This means CADSTAR users will no longer have to pay extra setup charges for this phase of board test setup.  The translator is available for immediate delivery by contacting PCE Texas via the request a Quote button. 

CADSTAR is the powerful yet economical layout tool available from Zuken which features traditional Layout modules plus real 3D design and real plane signal integrity analysis.   With this addition, CADSTAR has the ability to export, PCB data in ODB++, IDF, IPC356 and FatF. 

Fabmaster is a product of Siemens PLM Software/AS-MES and is the standard input format for many flying probe testers used both for low volume bare board testing and for high volume final assembly testing.

CADSTAR Offers Free Schematic/Layout/Autorouter Training Program!

 CADSTAR Offers Free CADSTAR Express Training Program! Effective today you may now download your own free non expiring, limited copy of CADSTAR Schematic, Library, Layout, Autorouter, and Library Editor. This is the real thing, use it anyway you wish to make multipage flat or hierarchical schematics. Print them, plot them export them to PDF. Create parts list, bill of materials, netlist or nodelist. The possibilities are unlimited. You can decide to add you own unlimited versions if you wish or you can send the data from the free training version to your favorited fabricator to have your own small board compeleted you.

Now, after you have completed the learning transition to CADSTAR on this free limited data size CADSTAR Express V.12.0, You have access to the  unlimited Schematic, Layout, Autorouter, and Signal Integrity, with Board Modeler for a 30 day evaluation time!

We have moved! We have now relocated all our offices to downtown Plano at 1201 East 15th Street Suite 406 to 410 (75074) Our mail address remains unchanged. You are always welcome to stop in for coffee if you find yourself in historic old downtown Plano.

CADSTAR Version 12 will is available on Link Z! Those of you on a maintenance and upgrade subscription are receiving their own notice by mail.   Don't forget to request your new license file by sending the old one to me with a request for V 12.0  Don't forget to requisition renewal of your upgrade subscription when the annual renewal notice arrives each year.

CADSTAR Board Modeler Lite V 5.0 is now available as a faster replacement of your existing CADSTAR 3D.  Details on the changes are available on request.

This CADSTAR 12.0 release also furthers the exclusive  Dragon Routing Platform - This is a completely new revolutionary routing environment that has been developed as part of the P.R.Editor application. IF you want to discuss details of the dragon router just call  us.   Support for the traditional 90-Degree router is still available.  

The Dragon Routing Platform includes the following:

Routing Strategy Dialog  - This is an environment allowing you to easily setup and manage all of your routing tasks.  This introduces the concept of target based routing and allows easy management of all stages of the routing process.  An extra level of intelligence allows you to specify items that you will allow the router to change in order to meet a target.  For example you may allow the router to relax some spacings on specific nets in the design in order to aid completion.  This dialog also allows you to configure the layer settings for each step in your routing strategy.Routing Consultant - This is a very powerful tool that can be run standalone or from the Routing Strategy dialog.  This will analyse your design identifying potential problems for routing completion.  This will also suggest modifications that you may wish to make to your design in order to increase routability.  When used in conjunction with the Routing Strategy dialog this tool will automatically generate a Routing Strategy using the information gained from the analysis of the design.

New native 45-Degree autorouter.  This introduces the Prodigy router - a completely new native 45-degree single trace autorouter.  The concept of a Hard Fail is also introduced with the new router.  A Hard Fail is a connection that is physically impossible to route.  A Refine Routing tool has also been implemented in order to help refine the final output from the Prodigy router.

Integrated Differential Pair routing.  This introduces the Paragon router - a completely new integrated native 45-degree Differential Pair autorouter.  Paragon will autoroute Differential Pairs in order to minmise skew and uncoupled length.

A new Routing Setup dialog has been introduced.  This allows intuitive setting of all of the options that affect the router. Many of the dialogs that were under Configure, Routing have now become separate tabs on this dialog.  The following tabs are available on this dialog:

General - Replaces the Routing Options dialog

High Speed - Replaces the High Speed dialog box

Autorouting Costs - Replaces the Autorouting costs dialog

Pusher - New tab for the pusher

Trunking - Replaces the Trunking Options dialog

Composition - Contains the Trunking composition options

Fan-out - Replaces the Footprint dialog

Spiral vias - Replaces the Spiral vias dialog

Radial Routing - Replaces the Radial Route dialog

Testpoints - Replaces the testpoints dialog

Grids - Replaces the Grids dialog New options for fixed Fan-outs have also been implemented during auto-routing.  Using this option it is possible to tell the autorouter to prefer the use of fixed Fan-outs.  It is also possible to specify a length that is used to identify these fan-outs.A number of overrides have been added to the Autorouting Costs tab.  These are for use by the Dragon router.New Routing reports for standalone autorouting and routing from the Routing Strategy environment have been implemented

Footprinting has been renamed to Fan-out.  A new option 'Minumum spacing' has been added to the Fan-out tab of the Routing Options dialog.  This will automatically calculate the Fan-out length required in order to Fan-out a component.  This is particularly useful for FPGA/BGA type devices.  The Fan-out outwards tool has also been enhanced so that it can Fan-out devices rotated at any angle.The manual Fan-out tools have been updated so that it is now possible to add Spiral Vias during the fan-out process.  A new setting Prefer Spiral Vias has been added to the Fan-out tab of the Routing Setup dialog that enables this.45 degree exit directions have been added for pads for use both in automatic and interactive routing.  A new Exit Direction dialog has been implemented for easy editing of these.Skew has been enhanced to support skew relative to a base item in skew group.  A new option has been added to the Display Properties dialog so that you can display the base E-Net in a skew group.  The Skew Report and the Dynamic Delay Report have also been updated.  User InterfaceA newSelect Items dialog has been implemented.  This allows easy selection of all item types in your design.A new Browse Errors dialog has been added to make the viewing of DRC errors easier.Spacings for Differential Pairs have now been added at the Differential Pair level.  The Attributes dialog and Spacing dialog have been updated to reflect this.Extend to Related E-Nets has been added onto the context menu for a net in P.R.Editor XR HS variants so that you can now easily extend the selection to a bus, skew group or differential pair

PCE TEXAS 020210