PADS Logic vs. xDX Designer? – When YOUR Use Case Changes

Since the release of PADS VX there have been some great questions regarding the integrated project use of xDX Designer and notably, no mention of PADS Logic. In this blog I’ll explore some of today’s typical use cases for each of these front-end tools.

PADS Logic is a well-established and reliable front-end tool of choice for many ECAD engineers and has been so for many years and for good reasons. Today’s typical PADS Logic user spans from the single user, to design bureaus, to small businesses and even some large companies. These PADS Logic users find that its functionality and features always have been and continue to be sufficient in getting their types of PCB design jobs done.

Nowadays PCB’s are everywhere; from the keyboard I’m using to type this blog, to the appliances in my kitchen, to the musical greeting card that I purchased for my father for father’s day. The reality is, not all PCB designs are cutting edge, high-speed, heavily constrained, high-tech nor compact.

In two recent conversations that I’ve had, one with a leading power supply manufacturer, and the other with an electronic water meter company, the need for, and cost of more powerful and integrated PCB design tools was not immediately necessary. Each of these companies made many different 2, 4 and occasional 6 layer PCB’s, their expertise, experience, existing design collateral and liberal form factors have continued to make their PCB designs achievable with their current tools. In many cases, design changes for their products occurred when the product requirements changed, when components became unobtainable or components were replaced with newer surface mount packages. There are hundreds of companies like these, which find PADS logic is still sufficient for their work. This scenario reminded me of a saying that goes something like “why use a sledgehammer when a hammer will do the job?”

Today, more and more PCB’s are requiring some degree of high-speed, constrained and compact circuitry. Many companies, even those that have stated that PADS Logic “gets the job done” have found that changes in technologies, components, capabilities and even pressure from competitors have required them to change the way they design their products and the tools that they design their products with.

Recently, the electronic water meter company that I mentioned earlier is in the process of designing a new line of meters that will include some updated technology that includes an RF transmitter, similar to what we see today in residential water meters. These types of changes are frequently the catalyst for ECAD teams to consider and employ an advanced front-end tool like xDX Designer that is fully integrated and provides access to signal integrity analysis features and centralized constraint management that is accessible throughout schematic capture, layout and routing.

Is your next design start a perfect candidate for xDX Designer? To learn more about how database synchronization between the schematic and layout works with the PADS VX release, click here. To see how easy creating a new schematic in xDX Designer is, click here.

Thanks for reading !    John