april 2005

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flo/pcb v2.2 features more than 25 improvements and enhancements that significantly improve usability and tighten integration between electrical and mechanical design of printed circuit boards. these enhancements demonstrate flomerics’ commitment to streamline physical design of electronics by improving design collaboration between electrical and mechanical engineers. highlights of the new release include:

• automatic “manhattan distance“ calculation and constraint management. this feature enables 1st order signal integrity requirements to be introduced early in the design process where component placement and thermal performance scenarios are studied as a function of functional definition.
• full integration with flopack for on-the-fly ic model generation based on standard package outlines.
• display of interconnects that are styled according to signal speed and quantity. this promotes fast creation of functional block diagrams and quick visual identification of critical interconnections.
• support of idf-defined placement keep-out regions to minimize rework associated with placement of components in locations reserved for connectors, heat sinks, manufacturing attachments or other mechanical features.
• annotation auto-sizing to improve readability of functional block and component placement diagrams
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  flo/pcb promotes a conceptual design process that integrates electrical and mechanical design for printed circuit boards, enabling early resolution of component placement and thermal issues – a capability that is proving critical for design of high-performance electronics. flo/pcb combines functional, component placement and thermal views of the design into a single virtual model, enabling systems, hardware, mechanical and thermal engineers to design collaboratively and re-solve design conflicts quickly and effectively.

flo/pcb has received enthusiastic responses from many of flomerics’ existing customers including agilent, bae systems, cisco systems, rockwell international, tellabs and thales.

other key features of flo/pcb are:

• specialized menus for rapid creation of functional block diagrams
• automatic creation of physical layout and thermal model from the functional block diagram
• 3d airflow and temperature prediction, for both sides of the board, in minutes
• fully-integrated library capability supporting jedec standards for component thermal models, and leveraging libraries from www.smartparts3d.com * and www.flopack.com **
• export/import board design information to and from eda and cad software via idf file format
• native, bi-directional interoperability with flotherm
  automatic report generation via html
• compatible with windowsxp, windowsnt, and windows2000 operating systems.

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* www.smartparts3d.com is an online, searchable database of ready-to-run thermal models for many common ic packages and other parts. these models can be used directly in flo/pcb

** www.flopack.com provides rapid generation of “compact” and “detailed” thermal models for ic packages, which can also be used directly in flo/pcb

for further information, please contact:

mike reynell
director of marketing
flomerics group plc
81 bridge road
hampton court
surrey, kt8 9hh
uk

tel: +44 (0)20 8487 3000
fax: +44 (0)20 8487 3001