CR-8000 2020 Supports Electronic Subsystem Design

CR-8000 2020 is Zuken’s flagship PCB design platform, and I’m pleased to share some of the most exciting details of the new product release with you. But before we get into the new product release discussion, you may be wondering why we call it a platform and not a tool. CR-8000 2020 has all the bells and whistles for electronic subsystem development. As product complexity continues to grow, the PCB must be designed in the context of a subsystem. That subsystem may contain 2 or 3 boards, wire harnesses, and the mechanical enclosure.

Electronic subsystem design has many requirements beyond a PCB tool. So let’s take a look at some of the underlying requirements that call for a platform. For example:

• Native 3D environment for ECAD/MCAD co-design
• Multi-board design
• IC packaging
• Chip/Package/Board co-design
• Work-in-process design data management
• Supply chain integration

CR-8000 2020 enhancements

Getting back to the CR-8000 2020 release – like many companies, each year, our development team gathers and reviews the influx of customer needs. The needs or requests are wide-ranging, from a pure productivity feature, to support for a new I/O technology. As you might imagine, it can get heated at times as engineering sizes the effort behind the most critical requests and weighs their importance. Eventually, the team hones the list and determines which enhancements will make the new release.

When you visit the What’s New in CR-8000 webpage, you’ll notice that we took a “themed” approach to selecting the enhancements this year. Firstly, the themes helped define the purpose of the product release and, secondly, provided selection guidance on the enhancements and bug fixes. The development themes for CR-8000 2020 include:

• Design efficiency
• System-level design and embedded verification
• Support for advanced packaging technology

Design efficiency

Design efficiency is an ongoing driver for every release. In other words, efficiency translates into productivity, ease of use, and an intuitive user interface. This year’s enhancements covered Design Gateway performance and ease of use with the move to 64-bit and a Windows 10 style toolbar.

Routine design work benefits from new skew group routing controls and semi-automatic functionality. New semi-automatic functionality includes ease of use enhancements such as selecting active layers, changing track width, and push-away components.

System-level design and embedded verification

This theme aligns very closely with the earlier platform discussion. That is to say, support for flex-rigid design is critical in the subsystem design process, and CR-8000 2020 includes new import/export MCAD support with interference and clearance checking.

Electronic subsystems need to do more and more in smaller and smaller spaces, making SI/PI and EMI analysis mandatory. Customers are asking for direct integration with best-in-class analysis solution providers. Therefore, we introduced various techniques of simplifying board design details data to reduce the time for meshing and contribute to stabilizing simulation results. So, if you are doing RF design with Keysight or SI/PI/EMC or thermal with ANSYS, you are going to like these enhancements.

Support for advanced packaging technology

CR-8000 2020 combines PCB subsystem design with IC packaging. A powerful and rare combination in today’s development environment. Two areas that received investment in this release include tile bump planning and support for power modules.

CR-8000 2020 is available today and is certainly worth a look. There is so much more in the release than what this short blog post allows, so I encourage you to visit the CR-8000 2020 What’s New page to learn more. Send us a message if you have any questions or to request a demonstration.