PADS PCB Design Solutions: The standard in desktop PCB design (Part 1)

Overview

PADS, Mentor Graphics’ worldwide leading desktop PCB design solution, enables individuals and small teams to develop PCBs within a highly productive and easy-to-use environment. Integrated and scalable, PADS allows individual engineers and designers to accomplish a wide breadth and depth of core PCB development tasks, including schematic entry, analog design, signal and power integrity, thermal analysis, and PCB layout-to-manufacturing preparation.

PADS offers a low cost of entry, yet delivers high performance that exceeds other desktop PCB design solutions on the market.  Long a part of the Mentor Graphics PCB lineup, PADS has benefitted from continuous, solid development and global distribution, making it the most popular desktop PCB software package in the world. And, as a Mentor Graphics PCB solution, PADS provides a clear and connected path to an enterprise flow if your requirements grow.

Are PADS PCB Design Solutions for You? 

 Have your current tools “run out of gas,”  driving you to explore new options? 

 Do demanding design challenges and tight time-to-market demands conflict with strict budget constraints? 

 Is cost-of-ownership a primary factor in your buying decision? 

 Do you want the shortest learning curve possible and user-experience that doesn’t divert you from focusing on your design? 

 Do you do it all – concept, layout, and analysis? 

 Are you looking for a plug-and-play solution?

PADS PCB Design Solutions

Mentor Graphics leads the PCB market in providing scalable design solutions that meet or exceed your requirements.  Whether you are a single designer, part of a small group, or

an independent group within a larger company, PADS PCB design solutions offer what you need, when you need it, at an affordable cost. 

System Design 

The PADS flow delivers the most robust system design capture and definition functionality available, including intuitive project and design navigation, unlimited hierarchical support, design reuse, advanced design attribute and rules management, full forward/back annotation including design rules, cross-probing with layout and routing, and a direct schematic-to-signalintegrity analysis link. 

Analog Analysis 

HyperLynx Analog with EZwave is a board-level simulation analysis and verification environment that is integrated into Mentor Graphics’ DxDesigner board-design environment. Using a single schematic to drive both the simulation and PCB applications

effectively illuminates costly and error-prone schematic re-entry, therefore significantly shortening the overall development cycle.

HyperLynx Analog provides basic simulation capabilities, such as DC, frequency and time-domain analysis, as well as more statistical approaches such as Monte Carlo and multiple sweep analyses.  EZwave sets the standard in waveform analysis, with easy-touse drag ‘n’ drop features enabling fast waveform viewing, multiple cursor support to sophisticated operations through the waveform calculator and measurement tools. Waveforms from multiple simulation runs can be overlaid to quickly compare result differences. EZwave also offers a range of plotting formats including time-domain, digital, smiths charts, and bode

plots.

HyperLynx Analog includes thousands of popular proven models, with access to extensive external vendor libraries, the ability to import and convert existing PSpice libraries, and even drag 'n drop symbol generation for automatic symbol creation using commonly found SPICE models. 

Signal Integrity Analysis


Signal integrity (SI) analysis is an essential part of modern electronic design. Increasingly-fast edge rates in today’s integrated circuits (ICs) cause detrimental high-speed effects, even in PCB designs running at low operating frequencies. As driver ICs switch faster, a growing number of boards suffer from issues such as crosstalk, over/undershoot, ringing, glitching, and timing problems. PADS design solutions offers powerful and easy-to-use signal integrity capabilities on the engineers desktop. With pre-layout analysis capabilities for defining routing constraints, to verification of the routed board to ensure your design goals are
met, PADS design solutions offer a complete environment for all your signal integrity analysis needs.