CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

24 July 2007

Product News

Zuken and PCB Libraries, Inc. Reduce Time Required to Build Surface Mount Libraries in CR-5000 with New Land Pattern Generator to Support IPC-7351

Zuken and PCB Libraries Inc. have launched the IPC-7351A LP Wizard for Zuken's enterprise-wide scalable PCB and advanced packaging suite, CR-5000. This land pattern generator greatly reduces the time it takes to build a standard SMT footprint/symbol for a library part and ensures compatibility with the latest IPC Standard for surface mount design.

A task that previously could take an average of 30 minutes to process, now takes less than a minute regardless of the complexity. It is simply a matter of selecting your desired entity from a list, copying component data from the manufacturer's specification sheet, and pressing a "create" button.

This software package consists of land pattern viewers, calculators and generators for the creation of CAD land patterns including pads, padstacks and footprints/symbols in SMT (surface mount technology) parts libraries. The generated library parts comply with the latest land pattern and surface mount design requirements as defined by the IPC. Using accurate data based on the IPC-7351 Land Pattern Standard; founded on fabrication, assembly and component tolerance based mathematic algorithms, users can generate highly accurate manufacturing compliant PCBs while cutting costs. As the created footprint is based upon the IPC-7351 specification, the LP Wizard is flexible to allow user-specified tolerance settings and may require some additional manual editing to meet a company's specific need.

"The IPC-7351, Generic Requirements for Surface Mount Design and Land Pattern Standard, replaces IPC-SM-782. This new Standard represents a change in the way land patterns are defined, developed, and categorized. We're pleased to be working with Zuken in a unified effort to provide their PCB designers with access to our IPC-7351 library and tools," said Tom Hausherr, CEO and Director of Technology at PCB Libraries, Inc.

The IPC-7351 LP Wizard application won the DesignVision 2007 Award (PCB Design Tool category) at DesignCon this year, judged on its innovation, uniqueness, market impact, customer benefits, and value to society. This tool produces accurate, high-quality land patterns from only a component specification sheet in a fraction of the time it takes to create a library part the traditional way.

The LP Wizard dovetails with the free library documentation and the Viewer, both provided by the IPC with the IPC-7351 standard. The data entered by a PCB designer can also be shared with engineers throughout the organization with the above mentioned free Viewer on a project by project basis.

The IPC-7351A LP Wizard for CR-5000 is now available for purchase direct from PCB Libraries at $2,480. All licenses come with one year's maintenance. For more information about the tool visit PCBLibraries website .

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