WILSONVILLE, OR, Dec. 20, 2004 - Mentor Graphics Corp. has incorporated design capabilities for flex and rigid-flex boards into its Expedition and Board Station RE PCB layout tools. Mentor said in a release that it is meeting the needs of telecom and consumer customers who are increasingly adopting flex PCB technology for applications requiring high functionality in small, handheld form factors.

Mentor has enhanced its leading AutoActive placement and routing environment in its Board Station and Expedition design flows to allow the definition and checking of the complex rules for flex circuit design. These flex rules include curved trace settings by area, complex contour following for routes, teardrops at pins, t-junctions and route width changes, cross-hatching of shielding areas, and selective pad modifications.

"Industry statistics show that a significant portion of the growth in PCB manufacturing will be in flex and rigid-flex production," said Henry Potts, vice president and general manager of Mentor's Systems Design Division. "We anticipated this trend based on interactions with some of our major customers in the telecom and consumer electronics industries and invested to enhance our solutions to meet their needs."

These flex circuit enhancements can now be purchased as options to the Expedition Series and Board Station RE flows, starting at US$7,500 per year.