Latest Releases Make PCB Manufacturing and Test Setup Faster, Easier and More Accurate to Improve Product Quality and Reduce Time-to-Market
PLANO, Texas, January 10, 2011 - Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, today announced the latest release of UniCam FX and Test Expert products from the High Tech and Electronics industry portfolio within Tecnomatix® software, Siemens PLM Software’s industry-leading suite of digital manufacturing solutions.

High Tech and Electronics manufacturers must bring cost-effective products to market faster than ever, while meeting a variety of challenges, including:

• Managing the data associated with the introduction of large numbers of new products in record time
• Manufacturing a growing mix of complex products
• Feeding critical as-built information back to enterprise systems

UniCam FX 9.1 and Test Expert 9.1 address these critical issues by providing the most widely used solutions for managing and controlling the delivery of product data to the shop floor, and preparing and optimizing product data for manufacturing and test processes. These high-performance, easy-to-use solutions are ideal for small batch, hi-mix environments that require rapid development and support of many programs for printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing equipment.

Faster, easier, off-line programming capabilities
UniCam FX and Test Expert add a wide variety of customer-driven enhancements and exclusive new features to improve the entire PCB manufacturing process. These enhancements range from data preparation to machine programming and optimization – ensuring that new products can be introduced quickly and correctly the first time. Enhancements will enable users to:

• Merge computer-aided design (CAD) and bill of materials (BOM) data with support for more than 65 CAD data formats.
• Process designs by simulating the factory in order to select and validate best manufacturing strategies.
• Configure lines, operations and define workflows for machine programming and optimization, such that they are achieving an optimized and balanced surface-mount technology (SMT), through-hole technology (THT) and manual assembly line setup.

New features have been added to UniCam FX to enhance the creation and display of work instructions and process documentation. While new machine interfaces have been added that offer seamless connectivity and support for SIPLACE® system, Assembléon, MYDATA, Fuji and other equipment. UniCam FX now supports Microsoft SQL Server® software and SAP® Crystal Reports software for easy to use, standardized data management and reporting.

Enhancements to the testability and fixture design rules in Test Expert ensure appropriate test coverage is available, and can provide valuable feedback to design prior to the PCB being manufactured. These features can reduce the development cycle times and modifications to new electronic CAD (ECAD) designs and prototypes. Other ease-of-use features have been added with support for new Windows platforms and improvements to the security administration and licensing.

UniCam FX and Test Expert are available now.