PCBNavigator existed in "rough form" before, said Mark Husey, director of product marketing for Precience, but it was not actively marketed until now. Version 3.0 adds constraint management between OrCAD and PADS PCB, Husey said.

"The constraint management is key," Husey said. "Engineers can set all their constraints at the OrCAD schematic level and pass those directly to PADS." Constraint passing is accomplished with a "was-is" table that translates electrical schematic constraints to pc-board layout constraints. Some constraints are predefined, and users can customize the table to add their own.

PCBNavigator lets users assign board, net, net class, component, component class, cluster and placement rules at the OrCAD schematic level. PCBNavigator compiles those rules and builds a complete pc-board netlist. A net topology extractor shows all drivers and receivers on a signal and applies stronger routing constraints for signal integrity.

Additionally, the interface supports bidirectional cross-probing between the schematic and layout, accomplishing the task via Microsoft Object Linking and Embedding. Engineering change-order changes can be back-annotated to the schematic through an automatic "swap" file generation.

Precience has developed interfaces to other pc-board tools, including Protel's Accel-EDA and PCAD, Zuken-Redac's Cadstar and Visula, Mentor Graphics' BoardStation, and Cadence's Allegro. But Husey said Precience is focusing on PADS PCB because that's where most of the demand is.

PCBNavigator 3.0 is available on Windows platforms starting at $1,995. Users can download a full 30-day working license from www.precience.com.