I agree with Bill on many of his comments.

Personally I would see this merger negative contributor to the
pcb/schematic environment, because in the long run, one tool set would
prevail due to management cuts and streamlining, and odds are the winner
would be are the Allegro flow as the upper management of Mentor would be
removed and replaced.  

One reason I see this as a negative contributor is that there will be
decreased incentive to improve the product.  If all flows are kept (best
case), there would be less money overall and it would be funneled to
various products on the basis of which one will bring in the most
revenue and overall bang for the buck. The other flows will suffer from
this "first child" syndrome, but in the end all of us would suffer.

As not be a user of Allegro or Expedition, (primarily Pads/DxDesigner,
MentorBS, and ORCAD capture/layout user on this end) and because of
which, I can not, nor will I speculate as to what tool is better worse
or what not.  Each tool has it's own benefits and headaches, some more
so than others.

To be completely honest, if they want to get more of a market share,
it's simple: make a better tool.  Refine it, simplify it, make it easier
to use and understand.  

I see more often that the PCB Designer taking on many more roles other
than just a board designer.  I my case I have the role of pcb system
admin/system librarian, schematic creator, pcb-designer, manufacturing
engineer, and liaison between vendors, engineering, purchasing and QA
(and yet I love it all, the good and the bad).  To me the ease-of-use
and efficiency of my tools are becoming more and more paramount as my
designs require more and more complexity to operate in today's markets.


Day in and day out the thing that take the most of my time are the
things that should be easiest to do by now.  In my case this is the
overall design flow system library/libraries management (dxdatabook,
ORCAD CIS).  I still use MS-Access to update my CIS database, the
schematic tool to create the schematic symbol, and layout software tool
to create the symbol.  There must be a better way to do this all in in
one tool. 

In the end, we should be designing boards with our skill sets and
knowledge, not trying to debug our tools.

Thank you for your time,

-JJ
________________________________
JEFFREY A. JENKINS
SR. PCB/CAD Designer CID+
L-3 COMMUNCATIONS - LINKABIT DIVISION
3033 Science Park Rd. 
San Diego, CA 92121
Tel:  (858) 552-9832
Fax:  (858) 552-9487
[log in to unmask]
 

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