P-CAD 2004 brings you heightened control and precision over the layout process by introducing new levels of usability and performance. Here are some of the significant features and enhancements to be found in the new P-CAD 2004:
What's new for P-CAD 2002 users (PDF)
What's new for P-CAD 2001 users (PDF)
New Situs Topological Autorouter
P-CAD 2004 now features Altium Designer's second-generation Situs Topological Autorouter as part of the Bonus Technologies, bringing users the latest in autorouting technology to the P-CAD desktop. The autorouter's Topological path mapping gives designers the power to deal with difficult design geometries and complex routing problems such as high-density BGA devices and connections to split plane layers.
While traditional shape-based routers view the board as a set of interconnected orthogonal shapes and map routing paths along the edges of these rectangles, Situs creates a Topological map of the special relationship between design objects that are independent of the specific geometry. This allows the autorouter to natively find routing paths in non-orthogonal directions, allowing the intelligent assignment of connections to layers and providing high completion rates on boards that contain large BGA devices or components rotated at non-orthogonal angles.
Topological path mapping also allows P-CAD to efficiently route boards and components of any geometry, without the need for extensive post-route cleanup work. The latest version of Situs, which features in P-CAD 2004, has also been enhanced to give superior completion rates, better support for plane layers and split planes, control over diagonal and orthogonal routing patterns, support for neck down on pad entries and assisted design rule setup with immediate feedback on problems prior to routing. Several predefined routing strategies are provided or may be built to suit a particular design.
More on Situs Topological Autorouter
Advanced Route
P-CAD 2004 features a powerful new Advanced Route Tool that provides enhanced versatility during routing and more control over trace placement. A new Plow Routing function will plow around copper pours, board cutouts, board edges, and keepouts while contouring around vias.
Advanced Router also delivers:-- Easier trace placement
- Enhanced viewing of traces while routing
- Improved graphics support for routing
- The ability to start route at any net object regardless of grid or connection line
- Automated active layer support when starting a new trace
- Support for hugging around fixed objects including component pads, board outline, fixed traces
- Prompt Bar/Status Bar improvements
- A new Route Options menu that is easily invoked as a right mouse pop-up dialog
New PCB layout features and enhancements
Min/Max net width
New design rules in P-CAD 2004 provide better support for unrouted nets for simulation and impedance calculations. For example, if Net A is unrouted and the user performs a signal integrity analysis, P-CAD creates simulated tracks for that net. To determine what width these simulated tracks should have, the Min/Max width rule is used. These new rules have been added to existing design rules and can be found under the Routing Section.
User-defined layer pairs
User-defined layer pairs now bring more intelligence to the flipping of pads and vias. Layers of the same type can be paired to provide more logical flipping of pads and vias.
Load netlist improvements
A new option allows the user to have all the copper pours in the design to either be unpoured (default setting), or to leave the coppers pours alone (don't unpour).
Matched Net Length support
The new Matched Net Length capability allows users to designate that the routed lengths of individual nets in a net class are intended to be within a specified length of each other. P-CAD 2004 can also export the net length consistency specification to Specctra®.
Layer stack-up
A new layer stack-up feature has been added for managing the board's physical layers, including plating, copper, and substrate layers. Each layer has a name, material, thickness, and dielectric.
Trace cleanup
P-CAD 2004 features improved support for the removal of trace segments that reside inside a pad or a via.
Unroute
A new Unroute command has been added to the Edit menu options and provides automated support for unrouting all nets or easy manual selection of nets you want to unroute.
Text style support in DTP files
Users can now add a Text Style section to their DTP Files simply by clicking Text Styles check box from a New Section Type dialog. Once a Text Style section is added to the group, a user can add a new text style to the Text Style section and easily change any property of the style through a property dialog. Additionally, users can see the statistics of text style from the statistics dialog and also copy all existing text styles from DTP to current design, as well as copy all exiting text styles from the current design to DTP text styles.
Smart rotation of attributes
P-CAD 2004 features a new option to choose the right reading of text for attributes during rotation or flipping easily accessible from the Component Properties and Attribute Properties dialogs.
Large diagonal cross cursor option
New in the Options display dialog in the cursor style group is the option for a large diagonal cross cursor style to help align objects on the 45 degree angle.
Draw Copper Pour Fill option
A new Draw Copper Pour Fill option in the Options display of P-CAD 2004 PCB and Relay allows the user to control if the fill of a copper pour is drawn or not. Keeping this option unchecked will also dramatically improve scrolling and moving around in PCB designs that have many copper pours.
State-of-the-art PCB CAM tools
The latest version of Altium Designer's PCB CAM tool, CAMtastic, is included as standard with P-CAD 2004 and provides extensive PCB CAM preview and verification capabilities with a range of analyses and editing features. CAMtastic also includes an array of fabrication-specific design rule checks, and fabrication files which can be viewed directly within P-CAD using the CAMtastic editor.
Available as part of the Bonus Technologies, CAMtastic supports the bi-directional import and export of ODB++ files and IPC-D356 netlists, and incorporates a new QuickLoad feature that allows you to load all supported file types simultaneously. ODB++ output generation also includes the component, netlist, drill pick and place and board shape data.
CAMtastic now includes 18 data verification checks for potential fabrication problems including silkscreen over mask, soldier bridging, starved thermals and net antennas. CAMtastic also includes support for NC Drill and rout configuration, board panelization, including support for creating panels from different PCBs.
Enhanced mixed-signal circuit simulation
P-CAD 2004 includes the latest version of Altium's mixed-signal circuit simulator which uses an enhanced version of Berkeley SPICE3f5/Xspice, allowing you to accurately simulate any combination of analog and digital devices, without manually inserting D/A or A/D converters. The mixed-signal circuit simulator includes the standard analyses – operating point, transient and ac small signal – as well as a number of advanced analyses including DC sweep, temperature sweep, parameter sweep, noise, pole zero and Monte Carlo analysis.
Increment Refdes in Edit Paste Circuit
Newly available through the Edit Paste Circuit dialog in both PCB and SCH, is an new option called Create new refdes by incrementing value that allows users to increment the refdes by a value that the user can specify when they copy the refdes from Pate Circuit
Copper Pour Backoff From Cutout
With a new manufacturing option user can select a copper pour backoff option for cutouts.
Backward compatibility supported
P‑CAD 2004 allows saving to older versions of P‑CAD file format by exporting files in ASCII format that are compatible with P‑CAD 2002.
Integrated Variants
The functionality that existed in the DBX Variants application has been integrated and enhanced in P‑CAD. Variants can be defined in both Schematic and PCB with ECO support in both directions. Variants can be created, and edited by renaming, modifying the description, adding or removing components, and modifying the attributes of components to be placed with the Variant.