Tag Archives: CAD

More Cautionary Tails

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Duane

I recently wrote about the horrors of LED marking variations. Unfortunately, LEDs aren’t the only place to find inconsistencies in our world. Another part to keep a close eye on is the ubiquitous three-terminal voltage regulator. For just short of … Continue reading →

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Predictions for 2013

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Mike

It’s been awhile since I used this space to make any predictions about the coming months, but the end of the year is always the logical (if cliched) time to do so. So here goes: The migration of manufacturing to … Continue reading →

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Why Not Nick?

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Mike

Nick Martin, the founder and, until last week, CEO of Altium, is fighting back against the board that tossed him out. But the real question isn’t whether he will regain his spot atop the CAD tool developer. It’s why the … Continue reading →

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Cadence: All Sync’d Up

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Mike

Cadence today announced the release of point revisions to both Allegro and OrCAD, continuing its tradition of keeping releases of its major platforms in sync. They show significant upgrades in timing speeds and simulation speeds, respectively, as well as better … Continue reading →

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Riding High on Design

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Mike

The herd is riding on the EDA vendors, almost all of which are at or near 52-week high share prices. In the past week, Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys hit or were trading just pennies off their yearlong highs. National Instruments … Continue reading →

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Missing CAD

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Mike

Am I the only one concerned that on the recent analysts call with Mentor Graphics, not once were the company’s printed circuit board design tools mentioned? The conversation, both from the company and the analysts, revolved solely around the company’s … Continue reading →

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Remembering Gene Marsh

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Mike

Gene Marsh, one of the true industry pioneers, has died. Marsh, as many readers may recall, founded PADS Software, one of the first CAD software developers, in 1977. In fact, he beat Mentor’s, Cadnetix’s and Daisy’s respective founders to the … Continue reading →

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2581 Hits a Milestone

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Mike

For years one of the hangups for any data transfer format hoping to supplant Gerber has been the lack of independent validations that the output from a given CAD tool could be accurately read in CAM. That’s why the IPC-2581 … Continue reading →

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Talking Data Transfer at ZDAC

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Mike

I had the great pleasure of attending Zuken’s ZDAC users group meeting earlier this month in San Antonio at the invitation of Steve Chidester, head of product marketing, and Amy Clements, marketing/sales manager. Steve and Amy had asked me to … Continue reading →

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QFN Custom Stencil Layer in Eagle

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Duane

It’s been said over and over that you don’t want to leave the solder paste opening wide open for a QFN center pad. A 50 to 75% paste coverage will get the best results. With full coverage, your QFN can … Continue reading →

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