Minimises iterations with mechanical & manufacturing teams

21st October 2015

Nat Bowers

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Providing visualisation, placement and design rule checking in 3D, Mentor Graphics has announced new PADS 3D tool capabilities plus major usability enhancements to the PADS flow for PCB design. This minimises iterations with mechanical and manufacturing teams while schematic design and layout enhancements improve usability across the flow for increased user productivity.

The powerful 3D engine within the PADS product enables full 3D visualisation, placement, design rule checking and PDF creation. The commercial engine also provides faster and more robust performance compared to traditional open-source software, supporting large databases with ease. PADS tool users can import STEP (Standard for The Exchange of Product data) models, as well as export full PCB assemblies in multiple formats. This release also extends the 3D functionality in the PADS Professional product with an optional four million parts 3D library and ECAD-MCAD collaboration tool. 3D capabilities are scalable depending on the PADS product configuration.

Robert Berrington, Electrical Engineer, DornerWorks, commented: "The photorealistic PADS 3D tool (with solder mask turned ON) made it very clear, very quickly that I had a problem. Without it, we would have had to document/disposition the issue, correct the design, ECO the release documents/drawings... not to mention take a reputation hit with the customer. With PADS, we were able to find and correct the error before it left the building!"

PADS 3D

The latest PADS product release includes many enhancements to improve the user experience and increase productivity. The PADS layout has been updated to include enhanced reference designator placement with physical design reuse elements, improved padstack editing, and updated translator and migration tools. The PADS schematic capture feature now includes the ability to automatically renumber a schematic sheet and update the BOM report.

Design starts can be accelerated with a new sample library, and access to the Mentor component portal (PartQuest), now populated with schematic symbols, footprints and parametric data for over 450,000 parts. Translators from competitive tools have been updated, including import of Altium V15 libraries and designs.

Paul Musto, PADS product line director, Design Division, Mentor Graphics Systems, commented: “PADS is a market-leading PCB design solution and we are addressing the needs of our customers with this new release. This demonstrates Mentor’s continued commitment and investment in PADS by providing our customers with easy-to-use, feature-rich technologies so they get to market faster with highest-quality products.”

The new PADS product release ships in November and will be available in a variety of configurations.