By addressing many different aspects of physical design in a single environment, Flomerics' Version5 integrated design suite for pc boards and systems not only reduces design-cycle times, it also breaks down communication barriers between various engineers involved in the process.

Version5 consists of: Flo/PCB for conceptual design of pc boards; FloTherm for system-level thermal design and optimization; Flo/EMC for electromagnetic-compatibility (EMC) simulation; and Flo/Stress for predicting thermomechanical stresses.

The integrated design process begins with an initial concept design of a functional block diagram in Flo/PCB. Hardware designers can then derive a physical layout from the block diagram. The Flo/PCB representation can be dragged into a system-level thermal design developed with FloTherm as well as into Flo/EMC for electromagnetic analysis.

The latter step enables designers to address EMC issues very early in the design process. A step-by-step approach to EMC analysis facilitates optimization of the system's shielding effectiveness. Addressing the thermal and EMC issues within a single environment means a big head start on the tricky tradeoffs that these two disciplines inevitably require.