[PCB_FORUM] Re: MatrixOne vs. Allegro PCB Design Workbench
- From: Gary Carter <gary.carter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: icu-pcb-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 15:33:46 -0600
Mike,
We have been a Cadence user for 14 years and an Enterprise MatrixOne
user for 3 years. MatrixOne was selected as the successor to our legacy
Product Data Management system. Integrating Cadence to Matrix was simply
a concept in our PLM strategy when the two companies announced a
partnership had been formed a little over a year ago. This caught our
attention as you might imagine and we approached both companies in an
effort to understand what was being offerred.
You state:
"I am trying to understand that the value of going with MatrixOne
standalone vs. the joint MatrixOne/Cadence solution."
Depending on your end goal, you might find they are complimentary
solutions. This depends on whether you are embracing the total Product
Lifecycle Management (PLM) challenge, or simply looking for a solution
to manage your electrical design discipline.
We recently conducted a fairly extensive evaluation using the Allegro
Design Workbench product and believe we understand the value it provides
us - essentially a complete work-in-progress (WIP) data management
solution for the Cadence library and design data (i.e. Librarian
Expert, ConceptHDL & Allegro Expert), as well as a configurable design
process management solution, pretty much right out-of-the-box. As
delivered Electrical designers don't really see Matrix or even know it
is there - Cadence has provided thier own UI that can be configured to
guide users through the company approved flow (including the ability to
include 3rd party point tools in the flow) and excercising as little or
as much control as you deem appropriate.
Cadence Design makes use of two pieces of MatrixOne technology to
provide its core Design Workbench capabilities. The first is a subset of
Engineering Central functionality for work-in-progress design
data/process management. Second, if you want or need it, is
Collaboration Central which provides a means of collaborating with
partners and/or suppliers inside and/or outside your enterprise. In our
case this facilitates the ability to share design information with
external fabrication suppliers and internal procurement, manufacturing,
test, etc.much earlier in the design process.
Cadence has provided all the necessary hooks to manage the Cadence
ECAD-specific schema and dependencies. Though I suppose one could
attempt to re-create this I would ask "Why would you want to?". With
every new release of the Cadence tools you would find yourself having to
regress this home-grown solution and reverse-engineer any changes
Cadence might introduce in the core CAD tools (Believe me we know -
we've been doing this very thing over the past 8 years - a non-trivial
effort with significant cost-of-ownership.) Our preference is for
Cadence to own that responsibility and let us focus our efforts on
streamlining our product development process at a much higher level.
We are now implementing in two geographically separated design centers
that share product development responsibility. At the ECAD discipline
level we have the Cadence Design Workbench product that manages
work-in-progress design data/process using the joint solution (the
"integration"). At the appropriate milestones we produce our requisite
set of product deliverables (i.e. BOMs, design/manufacturing data &
documentation), qualify them and then pass them to our "core vault"
(managed by MatrixOne). We're also performing a very similar integration
between our MCAD (Pro/Engineer) and MatrixOne environments and our long
term strategy also includes an integration to ClearCase for our Software
content including embedded firmware. At the enterprise level we use the
full functionality of MatrixOne's "Central" products for implementation
of higher level business processes, i.e. top-level configuration
management (inclusive of Electrical, Mechanical, Software and supporting
technical documentation), release management, engineering change
management, etc., to manage and disposition this intellectual property
over the entire life of the product.
I'd be happy to share more detail if you are interested. I would also
suggest you consider attending the MatrixOne Global Customer Conference
(GCC 2005) in May.
Gary J. Carter
Sr. Manager, Design Automation
Fujitsu Network Communications
Richardson, Texas
(972) 479-2236
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