News and New Products

Software lets you collaborate with engineers in other disciplines

By Gabe Moretti -- EDN, 9/25/2003

Product design and manufacturing often cross the boundaries among engineering disciplines because discrete goods contain both mechanical and electronic components. To help cross these boundaries, AutoVue 17.1, a new tool from Cimmetry Systems, lets you view and collaborate on product data, including 3-D casings and parts, electronic boards and chips, text-based bills of materials and specifications, and 2-D manufacturing drawings and facility plans. Users can view, mark up, and collaborate in real-time on 200 native formats from a common user interface. Available as a Windows desktop application or a thin-client server, the product allows users to access and manipulate product data. Cimmetry has added many newformats in this release, and you can view the list of all supported formats, download a functional evaluation version, or try an online demo at the company’s Web site.

New EDA features include the ability to cross-probe between layout and schematics; search, zoom, and highlight components and nets; query and drill down for entity properties and attributes; and generate and export bills of materials and reports. You can also use the tool for precise measurements, including snap to pins, vias, symbol origin, and geometry; for minimum-distance measurement between selected components and nets. It also provides a 3-D pc-board-viewing feature and dynamic control of layer sets and layer visibility, printability, order, and color.

The list price of a single-user license of AutoVue SolidModel is $995. The price for a single-user license of AutoVue SolidModel Professional is $1495. Quantity discounts are available at the 10-user level and above.

Cimmetry Systems Inc, 1-514-735-3219, www.cimmetry.com.