Zuken’s CADSTAR 14 packs a punch in the fight against design errors

Designers using Zuken’s expert desktop design solution will benefit from improved productivity and reduced design times through key enhancements. These include improved error report management, an updated BGA wizard and automatic net rerouting.

Identify critical design errors early



PCB designers play a pivotal role, collaborating with both electronics engineers and mechanical designers in the electronic product development process. One of the common issues faced is identifying critical design errors late in the process when the file has already been sent to manufacturing, which leads to costly changes and delayed time to market.



CADSTAR 14 offers new features to help identify critical errors early in the design process, saving time and expense:



-Errors captured in the design rule check report can be marked as accepted to ease the design review process and improve communication of the status of each error.

-User-defined color-coding of accepted and non-accepted errors to aid traceability.

-Improved error report management; the most important errors appear at the start of the report allowing designers to focus on critical issues in the design.



Speedy wizards reduce design time



Creating libraries is now easier and faster with the enhanced BGA Wizard that allows mirror viewing and editing of footprints in the parts library. The BGA and Staggered Grid Wizards have also been improved to allow additional pin configurations to be specified, enabling automated creation of any simple to complex high pin-count device.



Doug Zalaf, ECAD Team Leader, Surrey Satellite Technology explains: “The ability to quickly create complex BGA parts directly impacts our development cycle. New BGA Wizards in CADSTAR 14 allow us to get the design ready for layout much faster and consequently allow more time for routing and design optimization.”

Reroute automatically



Designers are often frustrated when they move components and nets on the design, only to find themselves spending more time untangling nets to avoid unwanted crossing of connections and symbols. CADSTAR 14 now dynamically reroutes nets when components are moved during logical circuit design, saving time and improving productivity.

Free evaluation software



With the release of CADSTAR 14 Zuken has also updated CADSTAR Express, the free, award-winning evaluation software from Zuken, which is now available for download. This is ideal for designers, students, and all those who want to try the latest version of this powerful PCB design solution to get a feel for how easy it is to use. This CADSTAR Express update is supported by easy-to-follow tutorials and more than 35 videos.



All basic functionality of CADSTAR 14 is included, with a limit of 300 pins and 50 components. Other features include a free parts library featuring 2,000 parts from the extensive 250,000 online CADSTAR parts library.