5196106085

ELECTRONICS Australia. September 1987

CAD software products

With many years of cxpericnce in the Computer aidcd printed circuit board design and photoplotting business, RCS Dpsign has extended its services to cover the software and hardware market. .

RCS Design now claims to offer the most comprehcnsive rangę of CAD Solutions for elcctronics design available from a single sourcc. The software has been carefully selected so that the best package for a given job can be put to-gether.

; Racal-Redac has appointed RCS Design as exclusive distributor for Victoria and Tasmania. The Redcad software is a complete design and documentation package and can be purchased as two individual components, namely Redlog and Redboard. Redlog features many simple to learn and use pop-up menus that guide the circuit designer through fhe preliminary schematic layout stage. Ali salient criteria for the PCB are ąc-cumulated at the point of design on Redlog for input to Redboard, a power-ful, flexible, easy to use multilayer PCB design package. It features many auto-matic functions such as component placement, orthogonal router, power and ground routing, memory routing and via minimisation.

For designers on a tighter budget, the company recommcnds the popular Protel package. Protel-PCB has been continually improved sińce it was first released and with the recently releascd Protel-Schematic and Protel-Route, the Protel family of design software now offers a complete cconomical CAD solution.

Such well known performers as the Compaq Deskpro series and the NEC APC IV personal Computer with their speed and quality graphics have been selected as the platforms for the software. The complete .rangę of Houston instrument and Benson pen plottcrs are available for hard copy checkplots RCS Design also offers the Marconi EMMA 210, a smaller format high accuracy photoplotter for firms with less through-put.

Details are available for all these products from RCS Design, 728 Heidle-berg Road, Alphington 3078.

Raster photoplotting

The Tennyson Graphics’ electronic laser plotter combines the versatility of a rótating drum with the speed and prccision of laser optics, for the rapid exposure of high quality phototools.

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Printed circuit designs are transferred to the plotting system from a CAD system. Standard Gerber photo plotter input is read into the system from 9-track magnetie tapc or IBM compatiblc diskettes, or transferred through the telephone system by modem.

Tennyson Graphics has also the capa-bility to convert Smartwork and Autodesk Device Interface files into Gerber Photo plotter input files.

The Tennyson Graphics’ plotter is a raster plotter, so it has no aperture whecls. All specifications for tracks, pads, mirroring, stop-and-repeats and nesting are entered on an alphanumeric terminal to individual job requirements. A high speed minicomputer, backed by 900 megabytes of disk memory runs ex-clusive conversion software, to turn the X-Y design into plot ready raster data.

The software interprets drafteodes to tables than can include emulation of both standard and customized aper-tures. Each set of “apertures” can include up to % different track widths and 96 different pad sizes and shapes. In the raster environmcnt exposurc speed is independent of tracę length, linę width and intricacy; exposure can be positive or negativc.

The plotter’s 40x73 inch format (1010xl850mm) is the largest in the in-dustry. It produces quality photo tools up to 10,000 pixels per square mm. The laser exposes at consistently uniform density and causes no pinholes.

The photo plotting of a 200x200mm double sidcd PCB with four plots costs only $245. The turnaround time is less than 48 hours.

For further details contact Tennyson Graphics on [phone].

PCB routing program

Protel-Route is a Iow cost automatic track router for printed circuit board design. When used with the Protel-PCB artwork editor and the Protcl-Schcmatic capture software, the routing package provides a significant productivity ad-vantage over manuał routing.

Protel-Route features powerful nine pass autorouting plus optimisation. Menu driven, the program is easy to use and can be tailored in its operation to spccific board designs. Professional quality routing is accomplished with board manufacturing and cost in mind.

Features include the ability to route four layer boards, including two signal laycrs plus power and ground planes; maximum board size 32” x 19”; and the ability to accept netlists from Protel-Schematic, Schema and OrCAD sche-matic capture packages.

On an 8MHz PC/AT, Protel-Route will autoroute an IBM-PC plug-in board with 90 cquivalcnt ICs in approximately 20 minutes.

System requirements are substantially the same as for Protel-Schematic: a PC/XT/AT with 250K of RAM and two disk drives. RRP of Protel-Route is $890 each plus sales tax if applicable.

Technical Imports Australia, Suitę 602, 220 Pacific Highway, Crows Nest 2065.

CAD/CAM system for print, wired circuits

A new’ CAD/CAM system installed at the Circuit Technology Australia plant at Willetton, Perth is claimed to be the only computcrised facility in Australia with the capability to design both printed and wired circuit boards.

Installed at a cost of $300,000, the new system employs Apollo hardware and a combination of Mentor Graphics and PCK Technology Software.

CTA routinely manufactures Electro-Wire discrete wired boards at their Willetton, Perth, plant for use in the US defence equipment industry, and also by Computer manufacturers in Australia. ElectroWire is CTA’s own developmcnt of Multiwire tcchnology licensed from PCK Technology of the US.

The Apollo hardware comprises two DN3000 workstations with high resolu- ’ tion 19” colour screen, linked to a DSP90 servcr processor. The DN3(XX)s incorporate a 68020 central microproc-essor and 68881 floating point coproces-sor. They have up to 8Mb memory and a 150Mb hard disk.

Mentor Graphics’ Board Station software interfaces with the PCK Technology Autorouter. The former enables CTA engineers to perform schematic capture and board layout and to gener-ate all manufacturing data — approxi-mately 90% of the design task. The lat-ter accurately positions the wired elec-trical interconnections.

Further information from Mentor Graphics (Australia), Suitę 404, 77 Berry Street, North Sydney 2060.    $