How many company use expedition PCB?

[elekvn]

Hi all,
Anyone can tell me how many company are using expedition?
I known many big company in USA are using allegro of Cadence such as: Cisco, Broadcom, Juniper Networks, ... and CSR(cambridge-silicon-radio) use altium. But I don't known campany use expedition and how many campany use it.
Can you help me.
Thank you

 

[yujianlai]

I use allegro

 

[FvM]

Why don't you ask Mentor for references? I got to know Expedition as an excellent tool. There may be doubts about value-for-money, however (basically the same with Allegro).

 

[elekvn]

Thank for your idea, but I want hear advice from PCB designer

 

[Uky]

I have used both.

Schematics:
==========
Mentor: DX-Designer. Quite nice and reasonably complex editor.
I once had some problems with doubly assigned properties, but in general OK.

Cadence: (OrCAD) Capture; One of the worlds most spread schematic editors.
Can create netlists in a multitude of formats. Easy to get started with, but can also
do quite complex things.

Layout:
======
Mentor: Very nice GUI, capable built-in parts library manager.
Messy to work with if designer and layout engineer is at different locations.
When I used it, it was far from stable. Had to manually fix designs.
It floods the layout folders with hundreds of files. There is even
a special menu tool that cleanes things up. Very nice padstack library manager.


Cadence: Inconsequent GUI (Try to set up Gerber files without tutorial...)
VERY powerful layout editor. You can do some really dangerous things
with it (handy if you are doing RF design). High learning threshold.
Because of being an old Unix design, using it is a bit akward but in the end
rewarding. Very nice and powerful constraint editor. Lacks good padstack
library editor. (Mentors' is superb!)
Pro: The layout is contained in ONE single file that is easily managed within a company.

Since I have worked as a consultant, I have come to appreciate Cadence OrCAD/PCB-Editor (Allegro)
because of the easy way it handles schematic files, netlists and layout databases. Variants
are very easily created.

I know of at least one company that uses DX-Designer (in netlist flow) for schematics and Allegro for layouts.

I myself have not explored that option.

I know that Cadence offers a "Lite" version for free, and I guess that Mentor most likely
must be willing to offer something similar. Mentor also has the PADS suite, but I am
not familiar at all with that tool.

My 5 cents...

 

[FvM]

Can you please add, if both results are based on recent versions? Otherwise, when they have been acquired. Thanks.

 

[elekvn]

Dear Uky,
You are a good consultant. I agree with you.
Thank you

 

[marce]

Funnily no mention of Zuken tools

 

[Uky]

You are right indeed.

I am from Scandinavia. As far as I know, there are not that many installations
of Zuken in my region.

I have come across paper printouts a few times when doing review of designs made in Japan,
but I have never seen any installation here.

That's about it.

 

[FvM]

If I remember right, Racal Redac (later Zuken) Cadstar was the first professional PCB CAD tool running on IBM PCs, released in the mid 80ths. Recent Cadstar versions are still sharing many design details and in some way the look of the forefather.

 

[marce]

Been using Cadstar since its Racal Redac days (started on it in 1985, one of the first in the UK), it has changed a hell of a lot since even when it was ported to Windows. Zuken bought both Cadstar and Visual from Racal for the tools, mainly the autorouter. For actual PCB design seats (excluding IC design) Zuken is number 2 after Mentor. It has a poor cousin image in the UK for some reason, yet having used PADS and Allegro as well as Cadstar in my 25 year career (Both for a period of 2 years), I have designed boards of the same complexity on all systems... (I will not go further than that as we will end up in the pointless this software is better ... arguments).
If you follow closely the four main desktop ECAD suppliers (Mentor, Zuken, Cadence and Altium) from a financial and management point of view for the last few years, it is quite interesting how their fortunes are changing and how stable their management has been (Mentor Vs Carl Icon, Cadence lay off 625 in 2008, Altium moving from Australia to Shanghai en Mass etc). Further if you look at the IPC "World PCB Production Report for the Year 2010" you will notice the worrying trend (for us in the West) of PCB design, manufacture and assembly all moving to the East. This article from Printed Circuit Design and Fabrication also illustrates the changing world of EDA design.
Printed Circuit Design & Fab Magazine Online
I do find the companies fiscal and management strategies interesting and worthwhile following, also both the long and short term plans and developments again I study as a side line. This is one site that has quite a bit of the non-design related data and company fiscal info: Gary Smith EDA

My earlier comment was more of a dig:twisted: as we poor Cadstar users are often looked down upon by the other tools!

CR8000

 

[NoFish]

Hi

as we are using DxDesigner and have to use Allegro as well in future, it would be nice to know, how the netlists are being transferred from DxDesigner to Allegro. Is there a tool somewhere, Or can Allegro read the DxDesigner netlists ??
Btw we are in germany.

Thanks in advance
CP

I have used both.

....
I know of at least one company that uses DX-Designer (in netlist flow) for schematics and Allegro for layouts.

I myself have not explored that option.

....

 

[Uky]

I am beginning to remember...

A few years ago, Mentor offered two product lines for DXDesigner vs Expedition (Layout).
A: An integrated setup and B: a netlist based setup. They also offer an Independent flow version.

Cadence Allegro requires a set of three netlist files as input.
so I guess that DXDesigner in this version can be set up to generate them.

I just checked Mentors´site and they do write that DxDesigner interfaces
with all "major tools".

DxDesigner is not too different from Cadence Design Capture (Old OrCAD Capture), but when I
used it back in 2008 had one very serious flaw: When placing a global signal (ie. "GND")
and connecting this pin to an arbitrary component, the net could either become
"GND" or anything else depending on from which part/pin the connection
was wired (!) This was one of the reasons I abandoned Mentor's set of tools since
it was such a basic function that must simply never fail.

On more than one occasion, I had to either edit the design using Notepad, or manually remove
lock-files when doing library management work (symbols failed to be created
in the library manager but could nevertheless not be removed in order to be recreated.

On such occasions, I had to start a file manager, browse the library tree and from there
delete the entry and then redo from the beginning.

The Library manager of Mentor Expedition also had one very irritating limitation:
Footprints could not be incrementally saved while working on them. One example is when hand editing some
1000+ pin BGA and adding or moving pins. Having a lunch-brake you had to leave
the computer in the middle of the work w/o any incremental save.

Such things pi**ed me off.

But this was 2008. By sure, Mentor must have gotten their act together by now.

 

[elekvn]

Every thing is good for me.
thank everybogy