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20 The PCB Design Magazine • May 2016 try a little harder, the job can be more manage- able but is still time consuming. For example, many require designers to continually edit and output the same drawing time and again be- cause there is no way to view the board more than one way on a drawing. This means that the finished drawing document may or may not be able to be produced again when back in the layout software. This is an area where Intercept has remained fairly strong. Drawing creation and output re- mains static so that the information trail from layout, to drawings, to output format can be followed systematically. The same board can be viewed from the top or bottom on the same drawing page, with different layer sets per view. If the board changes, a simple update can be triggered so that new drawings can be output. How the EDA Design Automation Nation is Evolving Today All in all, automating PCB design is mov- ing in the right direction. The days of ground breaking new PCB software options are slow- ing slightly with the maturation of the market, allowing for more robust options to be incor- porated into the existing infrastructure of the EDA software environments. For Intercept, this has allowed further exploration into their spe- cialty design options for hybrid and RF design. Pantheon and Mozaix were recently enhanced to offer brand new, up-to-date ink resistor gen- eration, answering a need for very precise and accurate ink configurations on hybrid and RF boards. Intercept is also keeping a close focus on de- vices and operating systems, such as the pro- liferation of Apple laptops in EDA workplaces. Making software available on any operating sys- tem and through whatever device users want to use will be important going forward, and may even change the dynamic of how software is de- veloped overall. The management of raw code across many different operating systems is not trivial. The movement of the PCB layout world to- ward MCAD systems is continuing forward at a decent pace as well, with 3D modeling systems working more closely with MCAD to model boards and identify problems quickly in the de- THE STATE OF THE ELECTRONIC DESIGN AUTOMATION NATION Figure 7: BluePrint-PCB helps designers produce comprehensive electronic drawings to drive PCB fabrication, assembly and inspection processes.