Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Software

Usability Study

A comparison between EDA tools of Cadence and ANSYS:

Cadence SPB 16.5 and ANSYS EM 15

Hung H. Tran

October 16th, 2014

Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................................3
Methods..........................................................................................................................................................3

Results and recommendations..........................................................................................................4

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Introduction
This white paper will compare the two similar product which are ANSYS
Electromagnetics and Cadence. They are both electronic device automation (EDA) commercial
tools that help circuit and board designer with ease in designing and verification phase in
electronic device production chain.
In order to compare the usability of those two competitive products, I will be a typical
user at my workstation. I am also a graduate student using these tools for my research project. I
have tried different features of those software such as designing boards, running simulations,
comparing results, converting results to compare with measured results. However, I still chose
myself as an user because I am not really a master in using it. Furthermore, none of the students
in my department will accept the testing because they do not have any idea about those software
so it will takes much time for them to take the test. I chose myself as an average user for those
software and I typically use the help documents to find instructions for actual jobs that I need.
There are many interesting comparisons have been made for the software features.

Methods
In order to conduct this usability test called cognitive walkthrough for the two different
competitive software products, testing was completed on the same computer work station
operated by Microsoft Windows 7 with Intel processors. Equipments I will use include my phone
for timing, my notes to record the failure counts and number of key strokes. Some other factors
in keeping the test scenarios the same are providing easy example, the task is not so easy and not
so hard. The computers are kept in the best condition in order to ensure that the tests is complete
and fair. Ten specific tasks commonly used in both software products are listed below:
1. Select a correct tool to open (I need to find the correct tool in software packages that
is used to extract S-parameters from a sample model).
2. Design a simple board including 2 planes and 1 dielectric.
3. Generating the mesh
4. Doing mesh refinement
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5. Doing pin assignments

6. Doing passive component assignments
7. Run a simulation to get the S-parameters of the board.
8. Run a simulation in time domain.
9. Put the results together in reporters.
10. Access to simulation statistics (compare the time, the RAM and CPU used).
Results and recommendations:

Task 1: Select a correct tool to open

In this task, I choose a specific job that need to be done: finding a tool to extract the Sparameters. For Cadence SPB 16.5, I read from the Help document and open the most relevant topic: S-

Parameter Extraction as shown below. Follow the instruction, I found a tool named SigXplorer
and I opened it. I repeat those actions with ANSYS Electromagnetics 15 and summarize the
results at the pictures and table below:

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In my opinion, Cadence and ANSYS documentations are approximately both wellorganized and clearly. However, ANSYS Help document seems to be shorter and clearer a little
bit.
Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

2:47

ANSYS

0:53

Task 2: Design a simple board including 2 planes and 1 dielectric.

In this task, I still did the job with an assumption that I already know to do it. However. It took
me a longer time (few weeks) to do it with Cadence where as ANSYS only took me about ten hour to
figure it out. Maybe the experience was biased because the experience with Cadence was based on my
free searching with no pressure. I had to watch the video, see the manuals, and ask other people who used
Cadence before. At that time my knowledge about electronic terminologies is not at much as the time I
used ANSYS. So I figured it out much faster with ANSYS. Another reason is that the interface and
software structure of ANSYS EM is much friendly with user than Cadence. From now on, I will put a
picture of screen captures for Cadence first, and then second ANSYS ones.
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Cadence - Screen capture

ANSYS- Screen capture:

A summary table of executions done on the two software is put below:

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Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

13:36

20~25

ANSYS

5:08

17

Task 3: Generating the mesh

In this task, a specific job that need to be done: generating the mesh for Finite Element
Analysis. Pictures and results are listed below:

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Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

00:38

13

ANSYS

00:21

Task 4: Doing mesh refinement

Mesh refinement is a very necessary step to make the solution converge to
desired accuracy.

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Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

01:05

19

ANSYS

00:16

Task 5: Doing pin assignments

Pin assignment is a step of defining the pins of the components on the board.

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Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

00:11

ANSYS

00:12

Task 6: Doing passive component assignments

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Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

00:17

ANSYS

4:02

4~5

43

Task 7: Run a simulation to get the S-parameters of the board

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Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

8:47

>=10

>=100

ANSYS

0:16

Task 8: Run a simulation in time domain.

For Cadence, see task 9 also.

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Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

1:41

49

ANSYS

0:16

11

Task 9: Put the results together in reporters.

Cadence generate plots in different areas where as ANSYS can put many reports in one.

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Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

02:23

33

ANSYS

00:57

26

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Task 10: Access to simulation statistics (compare the time, the RAM and CPU used)
In this task, the Cadence software give simulation reports as text file, which
contains less information than ANSYS does. As you can see from the picture, many information
are included in a one-click option.

Time (min:sec)

Number of failures

Keystrokes

Cadence

NA

Few

ANSYS

00:01

Conclusion:

We

have seen some differences between the two software. However, in the point of an
engineering view, those differences are not a big deal to software users. The main features that decide the
customer s selection is the methods and the accuracy and simulation time that the software indicate. For
the beginners, ANSYS seems to be a better organized software and easier to use. It also bring a lot of
simulation information that Cadence software cannot do. Another general advice is that Cadence is for
fast analysis and cheap computer resources. ANSYS is for big systems.

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