WILSONVILLE, OR – Mentor Graphics Corp. has released Board Station XE, the next-generation version of its Board Station design flow for large, enterprise customers. Board Station XE leverages customers’ existing IP (Intellectual Property), such as existing libraries, design data and design capture infrastructure, while enabling adoption of Mentor’s technologies, including a common environment for layout, routing and manufacturing preparation. This extended design flow is added to the existing capabilities of the Board Station design environment, allowing customers to adopt these new technologies at their own pace.
 
Board Station XE offers the productivity design features found in Mentor’s AutoActive placement, routing and manufacturing environment in addition to providing tightly integrated access to recently announced innovations such as the Topology Planner/Router and the patented XtremeAR and XtremePCB applications. These design applications, integrated within the flow, reportedly provide engineers and designers with opportunities to reduce design cycle times, increase productivity, improve product costs, and enable local or globally dispersed design teams to effectively collaborate.
 
"The Board Station XE flow provides customers with Mentor’s leadership technology while maintaining their ability to use existing libraries, library infrastructure, front-end design tools and legacy design data,” said Henry Potts, vice president and general manager, Systems Design division, Mentor Graphics. “By increasing design efficiency and productivity Board Station XE addresses our customers’ most prevalent business drivers of significant reduction in time-to-market and cost.”

MUNICH, Germany and WESTFORD, MA – Zuken has released the latest revision of the free sample download of CADSTAR 9.0 - CADSTAR Express. This fully operational version of Zuken’s desktop PCB design solution includes all the latest features of CADSTAR 9.0, with a limit of 300 pins and 50 components.
 
Zuken reports major advancements in ease of use and reverse engineering featured in version 9.0. The back annotation function, for example, is said to now make file transfer from PCB into schematic a much smoother process, assisting in the efficient management of engineering change orders that are particularly associated with high-speed designs.

OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada – Process Photonics (PPI) announced that it has launched a new generation of laser machining systems for high performance, high volume manufacturing environments, the FP1000. Other models in the FP Series of laser-based manufacturing tools are also available now.
 
FP1000 features include:
 
·          APS (active pulse shaping) for superior process quality.
·          High-performance motion and laser beam control for rapid, accurate panel processing.
·          Windows operator interface, fully automated self-calibration and part alignment.
·          Optional automated material handling.
·          Fast job programming and changeover for prototype work.
 
The FP series of products are said to be capable of high-speed processing of rigid board and flex materials, as well as green ceramic tape. Programmable processes include via drilling, skiving, cutting and routing. They are designed to interface with the customers’ manufacturing floor, industry standard file formats and data logging requirements.  Reportedly sophisticated software allows the machine to be easily adaptable to small-lot, high-mix, and high volume production requirements.
 
 “Customers need maximum productivity on the manufacturing floor,” said Bill Young, director of Sales and Marketing for PPI. “We provide more than that with a high-performance, high-reliability manufacturing tool and years of process knowledge.”