PCB Design Abstracts (English language)

Integrated Systems Design for Industries in Transition
10:50am - 11:40am
N.N. | Mentor Graphics
As product complexity has increased, organizations have been under constant pressure to meet their business drivers while bringing competitive products to the market-place. These pressures are being compounded by a significant demographic shift in heritage PCB design and engineering. In the western world, new entrants into the PCB design workplace is in decline, this is happening when engineering graduates as a whole are also in decline. Meanwhile, products are becoming more complex where, what was once isolated processes are now very much integrated. To ensure the viability of the next generation of engineering, there is a drive to lower the barriers to perform core engineering and design activities while enabling organizations to take a systems approach in their development strategies. This keynote will cover these trends and introduce Mentor’s view of integrated systems design for an industry in transition by showcasing specific technologies that will enable next generation of PCB development.

Building a Competitive Edge through Performance Excellence
11:40am - 12:20pm
Guy Brill | Management Consultant | Israel
Engineering tools provided by Mentor as well as some others can be utilized best when implemented in accordance with the company's strategy in order to achieve a competitive edge. The presentation describes how a $2.7 billion defense electronics company developed the approach that guided its implementation of tools and methodologies to achieve performance excellence. The resulting environment served the company in improving the execution of a large variety of projects including design, manufacturing and service of simple as well as complex solutions. The presentation is giving the perspective of the executive VP who led the process of building the multi-disciplinary operational environment and its adaptation following changes in the business environment. The presentation provides a template that can be used by other companies that need to achieve performance excellence as an essential part of their strategy.

PCB Design Process Excellence: Applied within a transnational, multi cultural organisation
1:40pm - 2:20pm
Jon Hill | EADS Astrium, UK
This presentation will highlight Astrium’s organisation & culture, it’s business drivers and product/design characteristics. It will go on to discuss how this translates into a need for access to improved PCB technology and how Astrium chose to harmonise it’s design process around Mentor Graphics Expedition Enterprise flow. The challenges of aligning a multi-cultural organisation will then be discussed with practical examples of actions that led to sharing of best practices and realising a “Design Anywhere Build Anywhere” design environment.

On the Way to Hierarchical Design
2:20pm - 3:00pm
Andreas Schaefer | Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Germany
In software development we are used to functions, code libraries and object oriented design.But looking onto hardware development, we still haven’t done this step, even if our designs would allow to. In this presentation we will show our way towards hierarchical design. We will explain the overall impact to our design flow, the decisions we made, the change in thinking we have to accept. There are still some obstacles and the way is not at is end, but we can show, why it is the right way to go and how the goal could be reached.

MECODES EDMD Solution for collaboration between Mentor Graphics Expedition Enterprise and CATIA V5
3:00pm - 3:40pm
Manfred Sammet | CADCAM Group, Croatia
Electro-mechanical design gains in importance because nearly all products contain both electrical and mechanical systems. Traditionally the design solutions of these two engineering disciplines have their own design methods, data formats and data management systems. As a result, products designed with ECAD and MCAD tools represent the result the non-integrated and domain specific design & process methodologies with limited collaboration between the disciplines. Accordingly, the new MECODES EDMD for CATIA V5 was developed as a unique system for electromechanical collaboration between Mentor Graphics EE and CATIA V5 based on the ProSTEP EDMD recommendations. EDMD is the protocol for ECAD/MCAD collaboration initiated by Mentor Graphics, supported by consortium of vendors worldwide and lead by the ProSTEP iVIP association.
MECODES EDMD Solution consists basically of two integrated subsystems which are essential for a successful collaboration: the Information Repository and the EDMD client for CATIA V5. The core of MECODES Information Repository contains data storage capabilities to enable an efficient collaboration design between the disciplines. The federated MECODES Repository environment provides resources for an integrated design environment. It consists of a linked 3D library for electromechanical components, access control capabilities, collaboration history including restore-to-point functions, a change management tool for real-time collaboration, customer defined attributes like reference designator, creation of value and ID numbers etc. The CATIA V5 EDMD client has implemented the ProSTEP EDMD protocol recommendation v2.1 for collaboration between ECAD/MCAD tools and supports in addition the ODB++ industry standard format for the transfer of enhanced 3D models like cooper layers, wires, silk screen and silk mask. That all results in better productivity, high quality, reduced design cycle times and innovation enabled by the collaborative design across the mechanical and electrical domains.