G'day, y'all
Just had to buy into this one, eventually. I so desparately wanted to leave it
(the can of worms this opens) alone but in the end I couldn't help myself.
I used to be Mentor's greatest critic. When I started using Mentor two and a
half years ago, I (and my colleagues at the time) filled a two hundred page
notebook with three categories of things wrong: things that sucked, things that
REALLY sucked, and things an apprentice programmer would be ashamed of.
I've had to change my mind somewhat. The ultimate power of Mentor is almost
unlimited. I've seen some really fancy customisations that make it sing and
dance. It needs good guys with good AMPLE (Mentor's programming language)
skills.
It is still the tool of choice for covering the 'soup to nuts' menu of
electronics. You can simulate, synthesize, re-target. Needs plenty of expertise
to do all that faultlessly, and it's a steep learning curve. But Nirvana when
attained.
And yes, it's a dog to use in standard form. And yes the user interface was
dreamed up under the influence of mind-altering substances. And yes, Mentor is
very slow at implementing advances in user-interfacing (No - make that
'sloth-like').
In the end, I've come to this conclusion:
If you're doing nothing but schematics and boards, there are packages that run
rings around Mentor, and they're improving at a rapid rate while Mentor,
sloth-like, rumbles on.
If you're doing the really heavy PCB stuff, Mentor is very good because it has
few 'gotchas'. It's easier to get reliable designs out of Mentor than it is out
of most other packages; easier in the sense that a not-so-good designer can't
make fatal mistakes. (I can hear y'all say "Crapola" but it's true with some
obscure exceptions). Of course, a very good designer with other packages who
knows the package's limitations will still do reliable designs and probably much
more quickly.
But the real reason Mentor has managed to survive in this cut-throat business is
because it is oriented to large company operations, who can justify the enormous
time and expense in customizing libraries and operating procedures to make sure
it all works seamlessly. Because sing and dance it can, given the right tender
loving care in the first place.
My impression is that if you don't give decent training, don't set up the
system, the libraries and the operating procedures correctly in the first place,
then hell and damnation will be your fate for eternity. Because Mentor is very
unforgiving, and can be maddening to the unitiated.
Humble pie? Had my share of that over this issue.
Cheers
Andy Kowalewski Voice: Business hours (972) 550 6365
Senior PCB Designer After hours (214) 871
1868
NEC America, Inc. Fax: Office (972)
518 4715
1525 West Walnut Hill Lane Email: [log in to unmask]
Irving. Texas. 75038
################################################################
DesignerCouncil E-Mail Forum provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c
################################################################
To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body:
To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE DesignerCouncil <your full name>
To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil
################################################################
Please visit IPC's web site (http://www.ipc.org) "On-Line Services" section for additional information.
For technical support contact Hugo Scaramuzza at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.312
################################################################
|
