Zuken, in a series of blogs is pre-announcing the release of a new, modern, PCB design product that will deal, in a unified manner, with electrical, mechanical, and data management aspects of PCB design and manufacturing. The formal announcement will take place on Tuesday October 25th. In the mean time, for a sneak preview you can read this blog.

It has been thirteen years since Veribest introduced its Expedition PCB design system. A year later Mentor acquired Veribest and began to offer two PCB design products, Board Station, its in-house developed product, and Expedition. Almost twelve years later, the situation is exactly the same: as a mentor customer you can purchase either Board Station or Expedition products. How is it possible that Mentor has not found a way to unify the technologies inherent in the two families into one product, thus significantly lowering marketing and support costs?

I do not mean to underestimate the efforts made by Mentor. The company has added a number of products that cover data management, cabling, and harness design, but it has done so mostly through acquisitions, not in house development. The strategy has been to acquire marketing sectors, immediate income in other words, at the expense at times of internal system design and development. Mentor still owns the majority of the PCB market, but its growth has been through the purchase of revenue, not through engineering innovation.