Mentor Graphics Corp and Edinburgh’s Napier College have established an electronic design automation training centre for Mentor Graphics’ customers in Scotland and the North of England. The Bracknell, Berkshire-based UK arm of the Beaverton, Oregon company, long associated with Apollo machines and due to launch its software on a Sun Microsystems Sparcstation by year-end, has donated UKP500,000 of software to run on Apollo Domain 3000 machines. The training unit is to be located at the Napier Regional Electronics Centre, which liases with local electronic industries. It is one of 12 such centres designated by the Department of Trade & Industry and the other Scottish centre is located on the West coast at the Strathclyde Institute. Napier has also set up an independent company called Polyed which promotes the college’s resources to industry and the private sector. The new training centre was opened by Ed Angus, managing director of Polyed and he says that the centre is not only essential for Napier to maintain its lead in training and research, but also to cover design documentation, operating systems, digital simulation, analogue simulation, circuit board design and schematic and symbol capture. Colin Newman, Mentor Graphics’ customer support manager, believes that companies moving to electronic design automation have to be prepared to invest in training since the transition to a different design can be fairly revolutionary.
