Zuken Releases Host of Upgrades to Flagship PCB Design Software

The latest CR-8000 release expands the design software's spectrum of signal integrity, power integrity, and electromagnetic compatibility analysis tools.

Zuken has announced the 2023 release of its CR-8000 design software. With PCB design now requiring higher-speed and higher-density layouts, the Zuken software update could be instrumental in helping engineers accelerate development times and improve their capabilities.

Zuken’s 2023 release of CR-8000 may help designers up their productivity with features such as template routing.

The PCB design process can be slow and tedious because of the many repetitive steps in circuit design, layout, and routing. To address this tedium, Zuken’s latest CR-8000 release provides designers with new features that speed up PCB fabrication at every step for more complex designs.

This article discusses some of the finer details surrounding the new features added to CR-8000 and addresses how the software can be used in collaborative settings to boost the productivity of a design team.

Automating Layouts

Zuken has added a considerable number of new features to make the design and layout process simpler. The 2023 release of CR-8000 gives designers more control over mesh planes and fill patterns. In addition, designers no longer have to manually follow existing routing patterns and can instead opt for the CR-8000 tool to automatically follow an identified pattern.

Zuken has also added many more validation and simulation capabilities. While routing transmission lines, designers can now see the effects of substrate tolerances on signal and power integrity through the built-in simulation tool.

With built-in signal integrity, transmission line, and EMI analysis tools, designers can see the impact of routing and parameter changes in real time. 

In addition, the software performs PCB-level EMI analysis to give designers a sense of the worst-case scenario for a given design. In this way, engineers can now do more while routing, ultimately saving time that would normally be spent on iteration between different software.

System-Level Recycling

PCB layout is not the only task now simplified with CR-8000 2023. At the schematic level, new features can boost the productivity and functionality of the software. From the beginning of the design process, engineers can now load sheets from multiple different projects to speed up development when a subsystem is already developed.

In addition to the recycling and annotation abilities in the schematic view, CR-8000 can now automatically export linked PDFs with sensitive information hidden if needed. 

In addition, new annotation capabilities give designers more options when annotating schematics to yield a cleaner final product. Customized annotations may also be used to clearly display design intent, which may be particularly useful in collaborative settings. Finally, cross-referenced PDFs can be automatically generated, with the new option to hide sensitive information.

Speeding Up Every Step

While CR-8000 is only one offering in the vast sea of EDA tools, the latest release has added more features to make it competitive against other software packages. The accelerated design process from schematic to verification makes it an attractive option for teams looking to adopt an all-in-one software package without compromising features. 

Based on how Zuken software has evolved from the last time All About Circuits covered it, the company is ever pursuing new CAD offerings to make the designer’s role easier. While CR-8000 may not be a perfect solution for every project, the added features may make a difference when designers choose their next piece of EDA software.