Zuken Extends Integrated Design Flow with E³.Functional Design

10th June 2010

Zuken Limited

ES Admin

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Zuken has introduced E³.Functional Design, a new product that extends the electrical and fluid E³.series design flow by enabling engineers to capture initial product design structure at a functional level. This reduces design effort in the very early stages of product development by allowing engineers to specify, at the functional level, a product’s electrical and fluid systems and then use these as the foundation for creating detailed schematic/wiring and fluid design diagrams.

With traditional paper-based sketches, it is difficult to reuse the functional design information for further product development. With E³.Functional Design, engineers can capture high-level design elements earlier and use them to drive the rest of the design process. This can save a lot of time as the design moves forward,” said Steve Chidester, head of product marketing for Zuken.

E³.Functional Design captures the initial design information at the beginning of a project to describe the functions and communication channels between the individual modules. It allows the engineer to refine and add sub-functions to these modules as planning progresses - preparing the project for creation of individual schematic/wiring and fluid diagrams.

E³.Functional Design is more than just a design capture tool; it also has intelligent functionality to speed up the design process. It automatically connects all components with the same signal and displays this mapping in connection and device properties. Functional units can be moved between modules at anytime with the affected signals being updated on the connect points immediately. This enables the designer to optimize the module configuration and establish the best functional load through the communication channels. When the desired functional units are correctly assigned, the modules are replaced by standard components from the library. These standard components include the additional information needed to complete the project, such as connector, mating connector, and connector pin terminals. Additionally, they inherit the already defined connection information from the functional design. This enables the schematic/wiring and fluid diagrams to be created quickly and easily.

Also, by using this in conjunction with the recently announced E³.Wiring Diagram Generator, the functional design information can be reused to automatically generate wiring diagrams.