All areas of design have seen an incredible rise in complexity, and pc-board design is no exception. Boards can often be too large or complex for a single person, or even a single team of designers, to effectively handle. With TeamPCB, a powerful design collaboration tool, design resources are usable across geographically or functionally dispersed pc-board design groups. This greatly reduces overall design cycles.
While other multiteam design methods may require error-prone manual editing, TeamPCB automates the synchronization of layout design data. As a result, multiple pc-board designers can work on the same layout simultaneously. It's compatible with Mentor's Expedition PCB, Board Station RE, and SFX RE layout tools.
TeamPCB offers a way to partition a board in the layout phase, allowing teams to divide and conquer the overall task in a fraction of traditional schedules. Before the board is partitioned, any number of reserved areas may be created on it and named. The board is then divided into these partitions. Each partition includes the data from the entire master design prior to partitioning. However, only elements within each partition may be edited from that partition.
While designing in a TeamPCB partition, designers can view edits from other partitions in two ways. For one, all partitions can be rejoined to the master design database. When the master design is resplit into partitions, each designer can see all edits from the updated master design. For another, designers can communicate changes between partitions, without rejoining and resplitting, through a peer-to-peer update process.
TeamPCB is available now as an optional add-on to Mentor's Expedition Series, Board Station RE, and SFX RE flows. Standalone pricing for TeamPCB starts at $15,000.
Mentor Graphics Corp.www.mentor.com/teampcb