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62 The PCB Design Magazine • March 2016 We also don't want new users to not be able to use the software. OrCAD Capture itself comes with some training videos built in, but we've enhanced that with our iTrain software. It's basically our classroom training in an online format; you can go through the same classroom exercises and learn the software that way. On top of that we said, "People always have parts they can't find symbols and footprints for," so we're also giving the customer a three-month license of OrCAD Library Builder, which does a number of things like build symbols from data sheets. For instance, you might have a 256 or 512-pin BGA, and you just scrape it right off the PDF, massage it a bit, and it spits out the sym- bol. Then you can go over to the footprint side and make IPC-compliant footprints. It's quite the deal. Today we sent out an e-mail blast to some of our customers and prospects letting them know about the offer and we're kind of getting inundated by the response. Shaughnessy: That's a good model. Roberts: It is fun. Apparently, OrCAD back in the heyday did something like this—way back between the DOS and the Windows days. I wasn't aware of that, but people have reminded us. So we're doing it again. Shaughnessy: Data management is a big area for you. You all wrote an article about data manage- ment for us a few months ago. Roberts: We've spent a fair amount of time looking at some of the kinds of problems cus- tomers run into. We can do schematics, PCB, and simulation, but a lot of times they're run- ning into things that aren't really design prob- lems, they're management problems. How do you manage all these parts in your library? We've had CIS and CIP for quite a while, but a big part of it was, "What about all my designs? How do I know the history? How do I track re- visions?" And that's what EDM is, engineering data management. It gives you things like check-in and check- out. So you can check-in your designs, track re- visions, check-in libraries, changes, and more. A lot of customers seem to be really interested in that, and it's solving a big problem for them. Shaughnessy: Most of our readers know how to design a board. The majority of them are senior designers, but they're just inundated with all this data. They've got all this data they've got to keep track of. Roberts: I visit customers and it's kind of inter- esting. As a tool vendor, you tend to think, "Oh, they're just spending all day in my tool." A lot of times that's not true. They design their board, they design the circuitry or whatever they're do- ing, and then they spend all this time worrying about this other stuff. They've got Excel spread- sheets, Word documents, different revisions, and all this data. How do you deal with that? This is what we're trying to help them with. A corollary to that is a lot of companies have PLM. Engineers do a lot of work-in-process, but once you get the first rev now they have to deal with PLM. We've integrated with some of the Greg Roberts, EMA director of marketing. ema is Bullish on data management