The Starting Point
Electronic products continuously get additional features, become more intelligent, more user-friendly and also smaller and lighter. This leads to more electronic devices and higher integration rates. At the same time environmentally friendliness, recycling, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and of course the appearance of a product become more and more important and heavily impacts the design task.
Novel product technologies like e.g. the MID technology can reduce the problems of conventional printed circuit boards concerning their environemntal friendliness and furthermore allow the application of cost effective manufacturing technologies. The design of such molded three-dimensional printed circuit 'boards' however require ECAD systems, which allow the design process of such devices not in two rather than in three dimensions.

The Presence is Two-Dimensional
Conventional electronic CAD systems for PCB layout which work in two dimensions are already hitting their limitations in many areas. The best utilization of the available space in all three dimensions, the collision free placement of electronic and mechanical components the routing of traces on and within the multiple layers of the board can only be analyzed with long term experiance, high effort and even though by "trial and error" with such two-dimensional systems.
Although three-dimensional design of products in mechanical CAD is meanwhile state-of-the-art, CAD for PCB design still suffered the lack of three dimensions.

Three Dimensions are Better
This is the starting point for MECADTRON. The company develops and sells modular software systems for the design of printed circuit boards in three dimensions.
MECADTRON offers NEXTRA® as a high-end CAD system, which integrates both CAD worlds of the mechanical and the electronic design.
Rather different from more or less powerfull couplings between ECAD and MCAD systems MECADTRON here integrates PCB and mechanical CAD features in one system. This leads to the situation that all functionalities of both application domains can be applied to one product model without any limitations. Both product model aspects - three-dimensional geometry and the electronic model - are absolutely homogeneous. This way an exact, three-dimensional and electronic model of a product can be designed which can be used for any analysis regarding design, manufacturing and behavioral investigations.

Three Dimensions for Electronics
Three Dimensions overcome limitations of conventional technologies and provide potential beyond known imaginations.