Mentor Graphics announces new Capital Tools that Expand Coverage Beyond the Electrical Design Domain

Posted by Courtney E. Howard

DETROIT, Mich., 6 June 2011. Mentor Graphics Corp. has expanded the company’s Capital product suite. In addition to providing an electrical system and wire harness design flow for the automotive, aerospace, and defense industries, the Capital suite now includes three new products that extend that flow both upstream and downstream, addressing configuration complexity, harness manufacturing, and vehicle documentation and maintenance. Capital delivers coverage from product definition to service technician and deliver high commercial value for platform OEMs, wire harness manufacturers, and service organizations.

Two new tools address the challenge of configuration complexity management. The Capital Level Manager product helps minimize costs caused by configuration complexity, providing a link between marketing and engineering and delivering numerical feedback of configuration complexity and the resultant costs. The Capital Level Manager is used at the early stage platform definition phase of a project, but can add value during the production design phase by assessing and helping to mitigate the configuration complexity impact of new optional features.

The Capital ModularXC product addresses configuration complexity. While supporting the traditional composite (superset) paradigm, the tool focuses on the alternative modular process where multiple configurations are constructed from harness fragments related to optional features. The Capital ModularXC tool automates definition of the fragments, ensuring compatibility and managing additional components: implementing the “spelling rules” of modular design. The Capital ModularXC tool can also be combined with the existing Capital technology called “modular synthesis” to implement an automated, front-to-back modular flow.

The Capital ModularXC tool can be applied to the manufacturing engineering domain. It can capture the sub-assemblies’ syntax to ensure the correct harness bill-of-materials is created. The Capital ModularXC tool complements the existing Capital tools targeted at harness manufacturing tasks, such as formboard design. Mentor expects to announce additional Capital tools supporting manufacturing engineering tasks later this year.

The Capital Publisher product accelerates electrical system documentation and vehicle service and repair. The product streamlines technical publications preparation by assembling electrical design information such as schematics, wire lists and location views into formatted electronic documentation packages. Combining technologies such as diagram synthesis and styling, the Capital Publisher can accept electrical design data from the upstream Capital design tools or from third-party products. It can validate and/or repartition incoming information, and also reflect as-built (as distinct from as-designed) data.

The Capital Publisher tool also provides an intuitive and highly productive environment for service technicians. This client application will simplify troubleshooting of complex electrical systems.

Taken together, the Capital Level Manager, Capital ModularXC, and Capital Publisher tools expand the Capital product range well beyond electrical system and wire harness design into an extended Define-Design-Build-Service capability.

“I am pleased that a standard data export from Capital directly feeds our chosen EMI simulation tool. This sort of application connectivity certainly simplifies our daily research activities,” says Gunwant Dhadyalla, principal engineer at Warwick Manufacturing Group’s Low Carbon Vehicle Technology Project.

“After several years of investment in foundation technology and products for electrical systems and wire harnesses, we are now announcing a second phase of our strategy,” Martin O’Brien, general manager of the Mentor Integrated Electrical Systems Division, explains. “These new products represent a dramatic increase in tool scope to cover all phases of electrical design creation through to product fulfillment, and highlight the unique approach taken by Mentor to support electrical platform engineering.”