CircuitWorks is a powerful, fully integrated bi-directional interface between SolidWorks and PCB Design systems. Running totally inside SolidWorks, CircuitWorks will read industry-standard IDF 2.0, IDF 3.0, IDF 4.0 and PADS files, and produce a SolidWorks Assembly of the PCB board fully populated with all of its components.

CircuitWorks will position component models onto the board to produce a very accurate assembly of a populated board. If a component model is not available in its part library, CircuitWorks will use the component footprint and extrude it to the given height to generate a component model for use in future.

As well as producing an assembly of the board and its components, CircuitWorks also supports:

• Board Cut-outs & Mounting Holes
• Plated & Non-plated Holes
• Placement Keepouts, Route Keepouts, Notes and Other Outlines.
• Pads, Traces and Filled Areas when used with the IDF 4.0 format.

Unlike CircuitWorks Lite included with SolidWorks 2005 onwards, CircuitWorks is fully bi-directional. SolidWorks Assemblies can be saved as IDF 2.0, IDF 3.0 or IDF 4.0 files.

This export facility allows a SolidWorks user to sketch a board outline in the context of an assembly, and export it to IDF. This is ideal when the shape and size of the board is driven by packaging constraints. Once a populated board has been brought into SolidWorks, components can be moved and an IDF file written out showing the new component positions.

CircuitWorks’ powerful filtering options can help simplify the models produced in SolidWorks. It is possible to filter out components by height, type, or board side – even to save predefined filter settings.

CircuitWorks IDF has been successfully proven with various systems including:-

• Orcad
• Mentor Graphics
• Veribest
• CADENCE Allegro
• ACCEL P-CAD
• PADS-pcb
• And many more.

For more information about supported systems, and to download a fully functional 20 day evaluation copy of CircuitWorks, visit the website at www.circuitworks.net