Hi Suzy,

I am afraid all I can offer is more of a testimonial than anything along
the line direct comparisons.

I know the mentor/expedition website has some results of benchmarks and
various other forms of comparisons to the allegro product. Also, at the pcb
design conferences PCBwest/east, Expedition has been the dominant tool in
the designer competitions.

I have been involved in CAD service for over 20 years. I have found the
expedition system to very designer oriented. Once you get to know it. The
learning curve is quite steep though, as least it was for me. I have heard
similar comments from other users though.

The router is superlative. We use it for boards with in excess of 10,000
nets. It doesn't need to be better. The routing is quality and efficient.
That's coming from a guy who has hand taped boards hundreds of boards, (
way too many years back ! ) and a many hundreds more cad layouts since. I
cannot comment directly on allegro's router. I have friends in the biz
locally that use allegro that have seen our router and find the Expedition
router dazzling.

The System has excellent controls for high speed design issues such as
differential pairs, impedance control, tuned nets and so on. We have used
it for conventional thru-hole via, micro-via, blind and buried all with out
a hitch.

The system has few weaknesses. I do find setup to be a bit clumsy. But that
may not be as much as an issue in a single company usage. As a service
bureau we are altering our design constraints for many different customers.
We also do all of our boards from a netlist input. So for us adding the
various net controls and properties is time consuming. Whereas if you are
going to do schematic capture associated with you boards that would also
streamline coding of the nets for a particular set of design rules.

The library work is also a very large proportion of setting up a new
system, and a large ongoing effort here for us as you might expect in a
service bureau environment. There are no limits in complex pads or
footprints or setting up the functionality of your parts. There is also
feature of localizing your design rules at the part level. I am looking
forward to that as a useful tool.

Post processing is almost a non-issue with this system. It is very fast
once you have your setup for it. I never get any calls from fab or assy
vendors with data questions. This morning for example I had an after the
last minute change for a job delivered yesterday and turned a new set of
output stuff in about 30 minutes.
There is no native drafting tool with the system though. We find Autocad
lite to be more that good enough.

Aside from the router being superb,I would also vouch for the customer
support team. They were right there at the beginning to help us bring up
the system. And since then have provided excellent response whenever I have
had problems. They are quick and know the product.

Hope this gives a little insight from a user at least. To me Expedition has
always been aimed right at us users ( especially us old layout guys ). We
have yet to find something it cannot do. We love it and have found it a
very profitable tool to have. Have fun with your search, it should be
interesting.

Good luck,

Dave Graves, UltraCAD Design, Inc

(Top Gun winner, PCB West, 2001 -- this editorial comment by Doug Brooks)





At 09:58 AM 8/7/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>I am looking for some comparison information about the higher end software
>packages (Expedition PCB, Mentor, Zuken, Cadence, etc.) We are doing very
>high speed boards with tons of classes, rules and constraints and need a
>package that is more compatible with our needs. It is also very desireable
>that it have a good autorouter and/or interactive router.
>
>In particular, some of the things I would like to know is:
>         user friendly
>         time to learn
>         set up time
>         some of the good things
>         some of the problems
>         tech support
>         preferably full integration with schematic software
>         ability to have complex rules added
>         adheres to rules etc, while routing (manually or auto)
>         ability to export to simulation tools effectively
>         etc, etc, etc.
>In other words anything you would like to tell me.
>
>If anyone can help me with info, even about just one package, please contact
>me off line at [log in to unmask]
>TIA,
>Susy
>
>Susy Webb, CID
>Sr PCB Designer
>Carlo Gavazzi Computer Systens
>281-875-1500 x33
>
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***********************************************************
Doug Brooks' book, "Electrical Engineering for the Non-Degreed Engineer is
now in its 3rd printing. Learn about it at www.ultracad.com

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