Yavne, Israel — October 13th 1999– VeriBest, a world leader in electronic product design solutions, and Valor Computerized Systems, Ltd., leaders in design-to-manufacturing solutions, announce a global marketing agreement to develop and provide PCB designers with tools which will significantly improve time-to-market and final product quality. The basis of the agreement is close integration between the Expedition Series PCB database of VeriBest design software and Valor’s ODB++® Design-to-Manufacture data exchange format.

Under this agreement, VeriBest and Valor have established close R&D relations to build an ODB++ interface of the highest possible intelligence-level, for widespread and general use by the CAD community. VeriBest and Valor have a history of working together as members of each others’ 3^rd-party co-operation programs, Valor’s "Open Systems Alliance" and VeriBest’s "iNTerop Alliance" program. This new level of cooperation cements a mutual commitment to full interoperability.

Steve Hughes, VeriBest’s Product Marketing Manager, PCB Design, explained the reasons behind the agreement: "There continues to be much debate in the industry about what is the optimum way to transfer intelligent, correct design data into manufacturing. The ODB++ format, funded and donated to the industry by Valor, is notable as a practical and comprehensive format which has gained wide-spread use at the high-end of the electronic interconnect industry for day-to-day operations. At VeriBest we consider ODB++ to be an optimised way of passing designs out to the manufacturers, bringing quality, cost and cycletime benefits."

During the fourth quarter of 1999, VeriBest will begin distributing ODB++ translators to its customers as part of on-going releases of its Expedition Series PCB layout system. ODB++ data contains all design knowledge necessary for product manufacture and test, including PCB layers, components, testpoints, drill/rout data, net attributes manufacturability constraint rules and DFM results. A single ODB++ file replaces the traditional "container files" of old-style formats such as Gerber, Excellon, Component Placement Lists, netlist, and HP-GL/DXF drawings.

Julian Coates, Valor’s Vice President of Marketing stated, "Valor funded the development of the ODB++ to provide a foundation for our own DFM and CAM systems. Since then however, we decided to donate the format to the industry, to be fully available in the public domain. The implementation of ODB++ by major vendors such as VeriBest is the best endorsement that can be imagined for our vision of an optimised Design-through-Manufacturing process."

ODB++ data opens the way for designers to integrate tools such as Valor’s Enterprise 3000 Design to Manufacture analysis system into the prevailing design anywhere, build anywhere business model, providing seamless communication and data transfer between PCB designers in OEMs and their outsourced manufacturing facilities. With over 700 leading sites throughout the world already using ODB++-based tools such as Valor’s Enterprise 3000, Trilogy 5000 for assembly and test and Genesis 2000 for fabricators (from Frontline PCB), the format is being used increasingly for the purposes of bi-directional data exchange and virtual integration of the entire PCB electronics industry.

VeriBest and Valor jointly promote the powerful combination of VeriBest Expedition Series PCB design tools and Valor’s Enterprise 3000® Design to Manufacture analysis and optimization system. This winning team brings full ownership and control over the manufacturing data back to the PCB designer who can now conduct a full range manufacturability analysis and optimization, with built-in process rules and design constraints, concurrent to the actual design process. The resulting concept-through-engineering process becomes smoother, faster, and more cost productive, with increased reliability.

Valor is a global leader in CAD/CAM software providing state-of-the-art solutions for electronic design and manufacturing. Providing powerful analysis tools and serving as an interface for driving production equipment, Valor's systems ensure that manufacturers use only optimized data. The result is accessible, coherent planning resources and improvements in tooling efficiencies. The bottom line is shortened cycle time driven by a significant boost in productivity and quality. More information about the company can be found at http://www.valor.com

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Editors Notes:

• Enterprise 3000 and ODB++ are registered trademarks of Valor Computerized Systems Ltd.

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