Maintain and control a multitude of assembly configurations from within a single design file. Specify which parts are not present for each board assembly. Determine substitutions for components based on your geographic or model-specific requirements without leaving your current design. With Capture Release 9, the number of variations on the core schematic design are unlimited; each variant can be previewed, printed, status checked and reported using either the CIS standard Bill of Materials or the new advanced reporting capabilities supplied through Seagate's Crystal Reports.

The Capture CIS internet component assistant feature connects you to an online catalog, which now has over 200,000 ICs complete with manufacturer datasheets and schematic symbols. With the internet component assistant, you specify the key parameters and it returns a set of candidate components. You can then review the datasheets, look at the schematic symbols, and even access distributor pricing information where available. Once you've found the component you want, the New Part Wizard helps you create a temporary part in your part database and place the part in your design.

Prevent late surprises by creating customized reports that help you analyze information about the parts in your design as early as possible. Create reports that contain the complete set of data for which you need clarification, including design costs, cheaper alternatives, verification of lead-times, reliability issues, and potential obsolete part problems, to name a few. Sort, subtotal and generate presentation quality reports in one easy step.

Capture CIS can access and analyze current design data using personally selected and corporate shared generic templates that you create using the popular Crystal Reports reporting package. Capture CIS has an embedded report viewing and printing engine so anyone can print, preview, or save the generated reports. You can then publish your reports through integrated email services, across the Internet/Intranet or output files in nearly every popular format, including Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, and Exchange, as well as Lotus Notes, and any ODBC or HTML compatible package.

With Capture CIS Release 9, you can design any template you can imagine using Seagate's Crystal Reports Report Designer. Visit our web page at http://www.orcad.com/cis/crystal.htm to learn more about Seagate Crystal Reports.

To better support your design entry flow, the CIS menu commands have been dispersed throughout the Capture menu. The individual windows in the CIS explorer window can now be docked, undocked, dragged, and hidden independently. The configuration of the windows when viewing the Preferred Part Database and the internet component assistant are now independently managed, giving you a smoother transition between the two environments.

With Release 9 all versions of PSpice and Express can be accessed from within Capture CIS. OrCAD's new Interchange™ Architecture simplifies packaging and licensing so that these applications can "plug into" any Capture CIS product once they're installed. Existing Express CIS customers under maintenance will receive Capture CIS and Express Release 9.

To give our customers more flexibility, OrCAD has introduced a new licensing approach that allows for the management of multiple seats floating across multiple clients. You can also float Express or PSpice "plug-ins" across multiple Capture CIS seats allowing you to access whatever capabilities are available on your network from within Capture CIS.

The following new fields are available for annotation from the ICA's OrCAD component data server (CDS) to your local preferred parts database:

• Description

• Supplier Name

• Unit Price (This field has been separated from the Price Quantity field. The Price Quantity field is still available.)

You can transfer these fields by including them in your database configuration file setup.

You can use the Unit Price field in conjunction with Seagate Crystal Reports Release 6 templates to total the cost of your design. For an example of this type of template, see the example COST_QTY.RPT and ENG_BOM.RPT report files in the ORCAD\CAPTURE\SAMPLE directory. Also, for this cost totaling method to work, you will need to make sure that any price field you have in your database is set to be numerical. Make sure you annotate the Unit Price (and not the Price Quantity) to this field in your database from the internet component assistant.

Two new parts distributors have been added to the internet component assistant:

• Hamilton Hallmark

• NU Horizons

If you want the pricing from these distributors to be available in the ICA's OrCAD component data server (CDS), make sure you move them to the Selected Suppliers list in the ICA Supplier Preferences setup (available during database configuration).

Capture CIS version 7.2 and Release 9 support the viewing of external file types from the CIS explorer window. CIS allows you to view any file type (PDF, HTML, etc.), as long as you have a browser installed on your system that can read the file and can be automatically launched for use as a viewer. For CIS version 7.2 a directory path, UNC, or URL had to be specified to locate a viewable file, in addition to the file's name and extension. With Release 9, CIS will automatically locate and read all viewable files that are stored in the same directory as your .DBC file.

If you do not wish to place your viewable files in the same directory as the .DBC file or use directory paths or UNC in the file names, then you will need to add the following entry to your CAPTURE.INI file: