Zuken first to back government initiative on PCB design with £250,000 software donation

Zuken has become the first EDA software vendor to sign up to the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design Scheme, represented by the Federation of the Electronics Industry (FEI), and part of a £2.8 million programme jointly funded by the DTI and the industry. The aim of the scheme is to increase the numbers of printed circuit designers and to enhance their skills. Zuken will contribute £250,000 worth of its Cadstar desktop PCB design suite to the key part of the scheme, the FEI's Electronic Design Realisation (EDR) Centre. The FEI predicts that at least 500 new PCB designers will be needed over the next four years and the EDR Centre provides skills development information and services for both individual engineers and employers.

Mark Thompson, Zuken's Cadstar Business Manager, commented:
"Zuken has been very active in promoting the need for government, trade bodies and educational establishments to become involved in developing the UK's PCB design skills base, so we had no hesitation in being the first to sponsor this very promising new initiative by the DTI and FEI. The UK leads Europe in PCB design skills, but we need to continue to invest heavily in the sector to maintain our position in this high growth market."

Anthony Parish, FEI's director general, said:
"We're delighted that Zuken are supporting the launch of our Electronic Design Realisation (EDR) Centre in this way. We look forward to working closely with them to ensure that the centre benefits the whole of the UK electronics industry, raising the status of designers, channelling much-needed talent into companies and design houses, to reinforce the sector's global value."

Cadstar is Zuken's desktop solution and it delivers one of the most powerful price/performance packages for PC-based PCB design. The package provides a seamless design flow that includes hierarchical schematic capture, comprehensive PCB layout, single operation post-processors for manufacturing, sophisticated library creation suites, automatic and interactive graphical routing. From single-sided to complex double-sided, multi-layer and surface mount (SMT) designs, the tools guide engineers through the design process to significantly increase their productivity.

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Note to editors:

Zuken is one of the world's leading providers of professional software solutions for the design of PCB/MCM/IC packages and systems. These advanced tool sets facilitate schematic capture, placement, routing and analysis, and manufacture and test. Used by the world's top 30 electronic product manufacturers, the solutions operate under both UNIX and Microsoft Windows. Zuken is the market sector leader in Japan and has offices throughout Europe and the USA. It is a global organisation employing over 1000 people and the company is listed on Level 1 of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
For more information, visit http://www.zuken.com.