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Minimum System Requirements

InLink

InLink is a CAM utility enabling Genesis 2000^® and GenFlex^® CAM systems users to retrieve CAM-related data from Frontline's Engineering Suite database and store it inside the relevant Genesis^®/GenFlex^® job data.

Smooth Joints

The Smooth Joints DFM rounds corners in flex PCBs to eliminate sharp angles without compromising the board’s manufacturability, reliability or electrical netlist. It eliminates angular corners and bottlenecks by adding copper and arcs to smooth out the angles. This DFM can also be used to eliminate "kneecaps", the protruding bump that occurs when two lines of differing widths meet at the end points of an angle.

Connect Bundled Lines

Connects two parts of a bus to provide a required connection type (straight, round, or chamfer).

Coverlay Optimization

This DFM action optimizes the coverlay layer by making minor modifications in the copper layer and in the coverlay layer itself. This reduces the amount of manual work required for generating coverlay layers.

Round Bus

Allows you to control bus rounding. Bus rounding may be necessary to solve an angle problem during manufacturing. (A bus is a series parallel lines of any width.)

Tiedown Creation

In flexible circuits, tiedowns are often added to prevent copper peeling. This DFM identifies and generates tiedowns, reducing the amount of manual work required.

Smooth Surfaces

In flex PCBs, angular corners should be avoided. The Smooth Surfaces DFM smoothes these corners by adding or removing copper from the corners without compromising the board’s manufacturability, reliability or electrical netlist.

Gold Tie Bar Creation

Adds tie bar lines from relevant nets to beyond the edge of the board to enable gold plating. Adds test point pads to these tie bar lines, providing access to the tie bars to run electrical tests on them, instead of testing the original gold plated pads.

PCB Numbering

Automatically adds index numbers, in any shape, size or form you choose, that take into account step nesting (arrays) for each PCB in the panel.

Drawing and Dimensioning package

Produce high-quality drawings of layers or features with linear, angular and radial dimensions that automatically appear as you take dimensions. Use customized templates for professional-looking drawings and add your own text - prefixes, suffixes, tolerances and notes. Preview the drawing and print it in full color or export to PDF format.

Create Part Step and Panel

Create the punch or rout tools needed for cutting certain parts (such as stiffeners and partial coverlay areas) from a different material panel before being incorporated into the flex board. Panelize the part step using automatic or interactive panelization, without first manually creating the panel. Quickly and simply create stiffener panels.

Create Partial S&R

Pack S&R subsets from the main panel for die tooling while keeping the original S&R design in tact on all other layers. Efficiently create, maintain and update punch tools, without the need for third-party applications. Simplify tooling hole creation by adding tooling holes with the same S&R as the punch tools.

Rotate any angle panelization

Automatically create panel layouts, based on board profile, with automatic interlocking and any angle board rotation on the board. The best layouts are automatically calculated in seconds with the different options listed according to material utilization percentages, helping you achieve the optimum layout with maximum material usage.

Set Teardrop Attribute

The Set Teardrop Attribute DFMautomatically recognizes teardrops (defined by lines, arcs or surfaces) that were added by the board designer and adds attributes to these features. This DFM ensures that teardrops remain intact should you need to move pad stacks later. In addition, you can automatically replace the original teardrops with teardrops of a different style or size.

Panel Gold Plating

The Panel Gold Plating Analysis tool works on the panel level to analyse whether all gold-plated features defined in the PCB are correctly connected to the gold tiebars in the panel. This analysis ensures that the gold plating process correctly plates all required features in the PCB and marks the instances where the drill or rout cut the gold plating connections on the panel level.

Flex Board Checks

Dedicated to flex boards, the Flex BoardChecks analysis verifies mainly flex-specific features such as bend area, adhesive air-gaps, stiffeners and conductive masks (e.g. silver masks), sharp trace joints and spatial overlap of parallel traces in adjacent layers (I-Beam).

Layer profile Editor

For rigid-flex boards where rigid and flex layers have different boundaries. The Layer Profile Editor creates different layer profiles and combines them to create the board profile. Layer profiles are used for editing: display layer profile/board profile/both, pattern fill, clip area, feature filter, snap and DFM/analysis run in layer or board profiles.

Tooling Hole Analysis

Use Tooling Holes Checks to analyze sets of tooling holes. Ensure that tooling hole sets, on a single panel step or on a repetitive group of steps, are not symmetrical and are not confused with other tooling hole combinations at the production stage.

Rigid-Flex Checks

Run Rigid-Flex Checks to analyze the flex layer part of a rigid-flex board, similar to Flex Board Checks. The following tests are included: bend area, air gap, coverlay, EMI and flex signal part analysis. Also checks the interface axis/area, rigid part connection flex part area, and the distance between the flex part and the rigid part.

Inclusion Checks

A generic analysis action for flex and rigid-flex boards, Inclusion Checks enable you to check the relationship between features from any two layers while allowing you to filter the features to be checked on each layer.

Streamlined integration and communication

GenFlex^® integrates flex board design analysis, tooling and workflow management to maximize efficiency and cut cycle time. In addition to the seamless integration available out-of-the-box with design and assembly systems through ODB++ Design, its Auto Input function automatically recognizes and translates standard formats as Gerber 274D, Gerber 274X, DXF, HPGL, IPC D 356, Mentor Neutral, Excellon and many others.

Ensured manufacturability and cycle time reduction

GenFlex^®'s specialized Design for Manufacturing (DFM) tools automate time-consuming and error prone tasks - such as rounding joints, smoothing surfaces, and accommodating changes in line width - to help simplify data, optimize production, and increase yields. Similarly, GenFlex^® automatically generates efficient drill, rout, laser-rout and diecut tools from coverlay designs.

Analysis

The GenFlex^® Design Analyzer gives engineers the freedom to review designs before, during and/or after tooling. The Design Analyzer's user-friendly interactive environment facilitates pre-production review and manufacturability analysis. Graphical printouts simplify design review in group sessions.

Design for Manufacturability for Flex PC boards

GenFlex^®'s dedicated, powerful and flexible DFM (Design For Manufacturing) tools fully automate manual, interactive editing sessions reducing errors and cycle times and increasing manufacturing yields. GenFlex^® layout optimization provides fast and controlled methods to meet the production challenges introduced by flex PCB layout data; GenFlex^® offers you an arsenal of dedicated flex PCB pre-production tools to help you simplify data, optimize production and increase yields. Signal layer data is curved and smoothed automatically - where needed. GenFlex^® fully automates the optimization of coverlay, covercoat and solder mask, reducing to mere minutes what would otherwise take hours of manual operation. Coverlay tooling is optimized automatically. GenFlex automatically applies minor modifications to achieve specifications required for punch, drill or rout.

Ensured Editing Safety

GenFlex's easy-to-use Graphic Editor eliminates operator-introduced design errors. Based on on-line Netlist and DRC technology, its highly intuitive interface reduces training time, increases productivity, and allows operators to view all affected layers in each process simultaneously.

Automatic Panelization

GenFlex's Automatic Panelization package consists of two parts, a panelization setup tool and a panelization wizard. The panelization tool enables the user to define all the panelization rules necessary to create and modify panelization schemes. The panelization wizard, helps users automatically apply a panelization scheme to a PCB and create a ready panel. It also enables PCB flipping and rotation and places dynamic text and plot stamps according to user-defined rules. Stiffeners added after lamination may be panelized separately.

Auto Input

Frontline GenFlex^®’s Auto Input function automatically recognizes and translates standard formats such as Gerber 274D, Gerber 274X, DXF, HPGL, IPC D 356, Mentor Neutral, Excellon and many others.

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Frontline GenFlex^® Editor

The Graphic Editor displays board layers and offers viewing enhancement capabilities, edit and selection tools, and additional advanced functions. Online Netlist and DRC technology prevent design errors in the Graphic Editor while the object-oriented user interface cuts training time and boosts productivity.

Design Analyzer

The Design Analyzer allows engineers to review designs before, during, and after tooling, facilitating interactive graphic control over all pre-production engineering parameters.

Bus Editor

Significantly slash bus-editing time by applying changes to all traces in the bus in one go. Perform a range of bus editing operations including drawing a bus, moving triplets, connecting two busses, rounding corners, evenly spacing bus tracks, unifying the angles of all lines in a bus, and creating a bus to connect two connectors.

Automatic Panelization Package

The Automatic Panelization package comprises a panelization setup tool and panelization wizard.

• Panelization setup tool – Lets you define panelization rules for creating and editing panelization schemes.
• Panelization Wizard – Lets you automatically apply a panelization scheme to a PCB step and create a target panel step. Permits PCB flipping and rotation; places dynamic text and plot stamps according to user-defined rules.

Move Pad Stack

The powerful Move Pad Stack editing function moves pads and their connected drills at the same time, without breaking the connections.

S&R Editor

The Step and Repeat Editor provides effective step and repeat editing tools to achieve complex step and repeat designs.

COF Line Creation

The COF Line Creation function allows operators to easily connect SMDs or pads in just a few mouse clicks.

ODB++ Design Database

Frontline GenFlex^® enables smooth end-to-end data exchange integration and communication via the ODB++ Design format. ODB++ Design combines CAD/EDA database, PCB fabrication, and assembly knowledge into a single database to support special flex board layout requirements, maintain design integrity, preserve original data, and minimize revision spins. database to support special flex board layout requirements, maintain design integrity, preserve original data, and minimize revision spins.