December 9, 2008 -- Mentor Graphics announced the forthcoming availability of its Capital Architect tool, part of the company's CHS product portfolio, a software suite for electrical system design. Capital Architect is billed as a graphical design application that helps automotive OEMs and their suppliers minimize the cost and/or weight of the electrical distribution system (EDS) by optimizing its physical architecture.
According to Mentor, Capital Architect offers companies rapid yet comprehensive analysis of multiple architectures. The tool is designed to assess the cost and weight impact of implementing the EDS in different ways regardless of design stage, including adding new electrical/electronic features to an existing vehicle.
Capital Architect is intended to improve efficiency and productivity by making it possible to dynamically evaluate and compare multiple architectures, maintains the company. "On-the-fly" EDS synthesis allows many architectures and implementation strategies to be quantitatively assessed. Because Capital Architect is able to synthesize composite EDS designs, it is also possible to evaluate the impact of option and variant strategies. The tool compares alternative architectural scenarios within "studies" and allows the results of several scenarios to be presented both graphically and numerically. Study results can be exported to Microsoft Office documents for further analysis and reporting.
"Capital Architect provides capabilities long sought by our customers. The industry has, until now, lacked tools to rapidly evaluate the physical implementation of architectures, especially in the context of options and variants. Studies have therefore been limited in scope and have resulted in excess long term vehicle costs," comments Martin O'Brien, general manager for Mentor Graphics Integrated Electrical Systems division. "The availability of Capital Architect is very timely as there is increased pressure on the automotive industry to reduce cost through management of electrical complexity, vehicle weight reduction and minimizing giveaways."
First customer shipment of Capital Architect is scheduled for Q1 2009.
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